Best J R Davis Podcasts (2025)

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"Not a Suitable Suitor" by Suzanne Cottrell 7:46

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2d ago7:46

7:46

– “Can we keep one?” Mitzi barked, poked her nose through the fence, and sniffed her wooers. Suzanne Cottrell, a member of the Taste Life Twice Writers and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband in rural Granville County, NC. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, Pilates, and belly dancing. H…

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Laurie Denyer Willis, "Go with God: Political Exhaustion and Evangelical Possibility in Suburban Brazil" (U California Press, 2023) 48:05

3d ago48:05

48:05

Through deep attention to sense and feeling, Go with God grapples with the centrality of Evangelical faith in Rio de Janeiro's subúrbios, the city's expansive and sprawling peripheral communities. Based on sensory ethnographic fieldwork and attuned to religious desire and manipulation, this book shows how Evangelical belief has changed the way peop…

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Phil Tiemeyer, "Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants" (Cornell UP, 2025) 55:34

3d ago55:34

55:34

Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (Cornell University Press, 2025) is a global history of postwar aviation that examines how states nurtured airlines for competing political and economic goals during the Cold War. While previous histories almost exclusively stress US and Western European aviation progress, Dr…

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Tales to Terrify 702 F. W. Weatherstone 52:04

3d ago52:04

52:04

Welcome to episode 702. This week , we meet a young Scottish woman who inherits the duty of tending to an old stone shelter… and the ancient thing that dwells within. COMING UP Good Evening: 00:01:06 [Trigger] F. W. Weatherstone’s The Bothy in the Field as read by Stephanie Nemeth-Parker: 00:02:48 TRIGGER WARNINGS The Bothy in the Field contains sc…

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Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom 55:19

4d ago55:19

55:19

Decolonizing Ukraine, by Dr. Greta Lynn Uehling, illuminates the untold stories of Russia's occupation of Crimea from 2014 to the present, revealing the traumas of colonization, foreign occupation, and population displacement. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in Ukraine, including over 90 personal interviews, Dr. Uehling brings her readers into the…

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"Unseen Troubles" by Marcia J. Wick 8:05

5d ago8:05

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– Nothing would deter us from enjoying our well-earned evening out. Ash-gray script swirled across the textured buff pages like hazy clouds crossing the sky at dusk. Marcia J. Wick is a blind, grey-haired grandmother, retired from a professional writing career. She writes freelance if it pays, for fun if not. Her work has appeared in the Motherwell…

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Janet McIntosh, "Kill Talk: Language and Military Necropolitics" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:28:08

5d ago1:28:08

1:28:08

Even casual observers of the military will notice the unique ways that service members use language. With all of the acronyms and jargon, some even argue that membership in the military requires learning a whole language. But rather than treat military-specific language as a cultural difference of the institution or a technical requirement for the …

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Siri Schwabe, "Moving Memory: Remembering Palestine in Postdictatorship Chile" (Cornell UP, 2023) 49:58

5d ago49:58

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Two juxtaposed years frame the subject matter of Moving Memory: Remembering Palestine in Postdictatorship Chile. In one, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet’s troops stormed Chile’s presidential palace. In the other, 1948, Zionist militias expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. That 1973 should move memories in Chile is obvi…

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Myles Lennon, "Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2025) 1:10:47

6d ago1:10:47

1:10:47

In the face of accelerating climate change, anticapitalist environmental justice activists and elite tech corporations increasingly see eye to eye. Both envision solar-powered futures where renewable energy redresses gentrification, systemic racism, and underemployment. However, as Myles Lennon argues in Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Sha…

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Michael Amoruso, "Moved by the Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil" (UNC Press, 2025) 1:13:00

8d ago1:13:00

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In the sprawling city of São Paulo, a weekly practice known as devotion to souls (devoção às almas) draws devotees to Catholic churches, cemeteries, and other sites associated with tragic or unjust deaths. The living pray and light candles for the souls of the dead, remembering events and circumstances in a rite of collective suffering. Yet contemp…

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"If We Could Just Get Married" by Lorraine Martin Bennett 7:24

9d ago7:24

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– “I drove your car off a mountain.” No mercy was given to two mostly broke kids trying to start two new careers and a new marriage. Lorraine Martin Bennett is a print, web and broadcast journalist from Murphy, North Carolina, who graduated with her high school journalism medal and received a scholarship to UNC Chapel Hill. Her reporting career inc…

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Tales to Terrify 701 Derek Alan Jones, Nick Badot & Victoria Brun 56:50

10d ago56:50

56:50

Welcome to episode 701. We have three tales for you this week. First, a boy learns the importance of respecting old traditions. Then, we sample an exclusive menu with the most exotic of flavours. And finally, a woman chosen for ritual sacrifice holds her people’s future in her hands. COMING UP Good Evening: Submissions: 00:01:06 Derek Alan Jones’ A…

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Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025) 53:29

11d ago53:29

53:29

Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through character allegations that label them as 'bad' women in need of control, or 'mad' women not to be trusted. Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women (Oxford University Pre…

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"We Thought We Were Safe Here" by Beth Bixby Davis 7:42

12d ago7:42

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– I felt the comfort of a giant hug, surrounded by these beautiful mountains. My heart is heavy for what others are going through. Beth Bixby Davis was born in Northern New York and moved to the Asheville area of North Carolina in the mid-1960’s where she reared her family, raised Arabian horses and had a 30-year career in nursing. Enjoying a hobby…

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Heather Sutherland, "Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, C.1600-c.1906" (NUS Press, 2021) 55:47

13d ago55:47

55:47

The eastern archipelagos stretch from Mindanao and Sulu in the north to Bali in the southwest and New Guinea in the southeast. Many of their inhabitants are regarded as “people without history”, while colonial borders cut across shared underlying patterns. Yet many of these societies were linked to trans-oceanic trading systems for millennia. Indee…

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[PREVIEW] Sightings – Episode 1 40:50

13d ago40:50

40:50

Enjoy this special preview of the podcast, Sightings. Home invasions are many families’ worst nightmares. But what happens when the invaders are from another world altogether? Step into the shoes of one rural family as their peaceful night devolves into a terrifying encounter. Will they run? Will they hide? Or will they stand their ground and fight…

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Paul R. Beckett, "An Anatomy of Tax Havens: Europe, the Caribbean and the United States of America" (de Gruyter, 2023) 1:04:21

14d ago1:04:21

1:04:21

Tax havens in offshore lands like Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas were once considered a rarity, the preserve of the super-rich. Today, they are big business available to the masses. Their goal? To avoid any form of accountability. Own nothing. Possess everything. Be answerable to no one. Where are these tax havens? What forms can t…

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"Operation New TV" by Lisa Williams Kline 7:18

16d ago7:18

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– “Let’s do it ourselves.” I punched button after button, painstakingly input the titles of programs using that archaic alphabetical system and ended up in some endless inescapable loop. Lisa Williams Kline is the author of two award-winning novels for adults, Between the Sky and the Sea and Ladies’ Day, as well as an essay collection entitled The …

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Shayna M. Silverstein, "Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria" (Wesleyan UP, 2024) 58:30

17d ago58:30

58:30

A vivid and intricate study of dance music traditions that reveals the many contradictions of being Syrian in the 21st century Dabke, one of Syria's most beloved dance music traditions, is at the center of the country's war and the social tensions that preceded conflict. Drawing on almost two decades of ethnographic, archival, and digital research,…

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Tales to Terrify 700 Philip Madden & Mary Elizabeth Braddon 39:27

17d ago39:27

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Welcome to episode 700. We have two tales for you this week. First, a pastor seeks to avenge his murdered family with the help of an unlikely ally. Then, a young artist learns the deadly cost of heartbreak. COMING UP Good Evening: 00:01:06 Philip Madden’s The Pastor as read by Curtis Michael Holland: 00:03:01 [TRIGGER] Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The …

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Ep: 97: Paranormal celebrity: Interview with Dr Ciaran O'Keeffe 1:10:08

18d ago1:10:08

1:10:08

Dr Ciarán O'Keeffe (born 21 March 1971) is an English psychologist specialising in parapsychology and forensic psychology. He is currently employed at Bucks New University. He has previously held a research associate position at the University of Toulouse and also an online tutor position at Derby University. Previously employed at Liverpool Hope U…

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Maya J. Berry, "Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons" (Duke UP, 2025) 1:31:12

19d ago1:31:12

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In Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons (Duke University Press, 2025), anthropologist and dancer Maya J. Berry examines rumba as a way of knowing the embodied and spiritual dimensions of Black political imagination in post-Fidel Cuba. Historically a Black working-class popular dance, rumba, Berry contends, is a…

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Maya J. Berry, "Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons" (Duke UP, 2025) 1:31:12

19d ago1:31:12

1:31:12

In Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons (Duke University Press, 2025), anthropologist and dancer Maya J. Berry examines rumba as a way of knowing the embodied and spiritual dimensions of Black political imagination in post-Fidel Cuba. Historically a Black working-class popular dance, rumba, Berry contends, is a…

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Thiago P. Barbosa, "Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970)" (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025) 45:04

21d ago45:04

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Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970) (De Gruyter, 2025) analyzes how racial knowledge has circulated in transnational entanglements, particularly between Germany and India, into the research on human variation in India, racializing the understanding of caste and ethnicity. It focuses …

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Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024) 58:44

22d ago58:44

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In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary efforts to curb human trafficking have fallen so spectacularly short of their stated goals despite well-funded campaigns by the United Nations and its member-state governments. Focusing on Japan’s efforts…

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"Going for the Gold" by Thomas Gery 8:00

23d ago8:00

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– “I can do that.” The words “stress,” “pressure,” “anxiety” appear on page after page. Thomas Gery, a common man with uncommon experiences lives in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army with duty in Vietnam. As a social worker he helped children, youth, and adults in a variety of practice venues and situations throughout a work li…

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Tales to Terrify 699 Tabitha Lord, Bryan Carrigan & Avra Margariti 48:22

24d ago48:22

48:22

Welcome to episode 699 We have three tales for you, about a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster, a horny teen who gets more than just a hookup, and a young woman trapped inside her house by a mysterious guest. COMING UP Good Evening: Submissions are open: 00:01:06 [Trigger] Tabitha Lord’s Monster as read by Amanda Stribling: 00:03:37 Bryan Carrigan’s…

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"Choices About Love" by Ginny Foard 7:35

26d ago7:35

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– “You’ve got to do something about this,” they jibed him. Of course, later they told their kids that they loved us all. Usually they added, “despite the headaches you caused us.” Ginny’s parents had storytelling in their bones. Will’s hands reenacted stories, swooping up high or spinning across the table with an ice cream spoon while he added soun…

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Candace Lukasik, "Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2025) 54:58

26d ago54:58

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Coptic Orthodox Christians comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East and are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. While once the objects of American missionary efforts, in recent years Copts have been in the spotlight for their Christianity. A spate of ISIS-related bombings and attacks have garnered worldwide atten…

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Ana Hebra Flaster, "Property of the Revolution: From a Cuban Barrio to a New Hampshire Mill Town" (She Writes Press, 2025) 1:03:01

28d ago1:03:01

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Ana Hebra Flaster was six years old when her working-class family was kicked out of their Havana barrio for opposing communism. Once devoted revolutionaries themselves but disillusioned by the Castro government’s repressive tactics, they fled to the US. The permanent losses they suffered—of home, country, and loved ones, all within forty-eight hour…

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Yasmin Moll, "The Revolution Within: Islamic Media and the Struggle for a New Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2025) 1:03:07

29d ago1:03:07

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The New Preachers of Egypt—so named because of their novel preaching styles, which incorporate everything from melodrama to music to self-help—came to prominence on the world's first Islamic television channel on the cusp of the Arab Spring uprisings. They promoted an innovative and inclusive Islamic piety that millions of young middle-class viewer…

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"The Truth Comes Out" by Joel R. Stegall 7:55

1M ago7:55

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— I respected the officer and assumed he would also respect me. This was not just the assassination of the President; it was the death of hopes and dreams. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Joel Stegall has completed a family history dating from the early Colonial Era. Longer (and more interesting) than any scholarly work he ever wro…

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Tales to Terrify 698 Daniel Stride & Rachel Bolton (Stoker) 55:12

1M ago55:12

55:12

Welcome to episode 698 and happy StokerCon! We have two tales for you this week. First, a strange child develops a special bond with the hermit in his garden. Then, a woman goes to extreme lengths to leave her abusive husband. COMING UP Good Evening: StokerCon 2025: 00:01:06 Daniel Stride’s The One Who Saw Too Much as read by Jesse Holt: 00:04:09 […

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"Strike Up the Band" by Joel R. Stegall (part 1 of paired stories) 7:07

1M ago7:07

7:07

— whatever enlisted men played, or claimed to play, an instrument An order came down to me to have the band looking sharp, sounding good, and ready to lead the parade. In his career as professor and academic administrator, Joel Stegall wrote more than 35 journal articles, book chapters, opinion pieces and other such. None of these gained him widesp…

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Ep:96: Paranormal investigator: Interview with Rachel Hayward 1:23:21

1M ago1:23:21

1:23:21

Rachel Hayward is a paranormal investigator and author. She grew up in a haunted lock house and has spent the last 40years investigating and researching paranormal phenomena. A member of The Ghost club and ASSAP, Rachel has done talks on poltergeists and a local witch, Ellen Hayward (no relation). Rachel is a lead investigator and founder of the pa…

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Kevin B. Anderson, "The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism" (Verso, 2025) 1:04:22

1M ago1:04:22

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Kevin Anderson’s The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025) encourages to look again at the intellectual and political work of a figure some may assume has been exhausted: Karl Marx. Following on from his earlier landmark study Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity and Non-Western Socie…

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Tales to Terrify 697 A. A. Nour 51:44

1M ago51:44

51:44

Welcome to episode 697. We have one tale for you this week, about a woman torn between who she feels she should be and true beast that lurks within her. COMING UP Good Evening: 00:01:06 [Trigger] A. A. Nour’s Lonely Skin as read by Erin Grassie: 00:03:09 TRIGGER WARNINGS Lonely Skin contains scenes of Animal Death. PERTINENT LINKS Support us on Pat…

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"A Christmas Surprise" by Annette L. Brown 8:07

1M ago8:07

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– “Sweetheart, wake up! Santa’s here!” “But what I really want, Santa, is a flashlight.” Annette L. Brown is a personal essayist and creative nonfiction writer who has pieces reflecting her love of nature, family, beauty, and humor in several publications including Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Bad Day Book (Parenting), and several vol…

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Tamar R. Shirinian, "Survival of a Perverse Nation: Morality and Queer Possibility in Armenia" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:10:40

1M ago1:10:40

1:10:40

Tamar Shirinian is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her new book, Survival of a Perverse Nation: Morality and Queer Possibility in Armenia (Duke UP, 2024), studies the relationships between gender, sexuality, nationalism, political-economy, and social reproduction and how these are experienced,…

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"The Perfect Imperfect" by Alison Rice Bruster 7:24

1M ago7:24

7:24

– That was the plan, anyway. In that moment, we stopped feeling sorry for ourselves and remembered why we came. After a career spent finding the voices of senior business executives, Alison Rice Bruster is writing a new chapter. She holds a BA in English Literature from Queens University of Charlotte. This is her third story included in a collectio…

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Robert Garland, "What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife" (Princeton UP, 2025) 53:49

1M ago53:49

53:49

A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Robert Garland explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditions—Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Earl…

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Andrew Smith, "First People: The Lost History of the Khoisan" (Jonathan Ball, 2022) 1:18:34

1M ago1:18:34

1:18:34

First people communities are the early groups of hunter gatherers, herders, and the oldest human lineages of Africa, some migrating from as far as East Africa to settle across southern Africa, in countries like Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. In First People: The Lost History of the Khoisan, archaeologist Andrew Smith, who has excavated at some…

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Agustín Fuentes, "Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary" (Princeton UP, 2025) 45:11

1M ago45:11

45:11

Being human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there is a lot more variation and overlap than we may realize. Sex Is a Spectrum offers a bold new paradigm for understanding the biology of sex, drawing on the latest science to explain why the binary view…

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Katarina Kušic, "Beyond International Intervention: Politics of Improvement in Serbia" (University of Michigan Press, 2025) 1:03:37

1M ago1:03:37

1:03:37

Studies of statebuilding and peacebuilding have been criticized for their disregard of people living the consequences of intervention projects. Beyond International Intervention: Politics of Improvement in Serbia (University of Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Katarina Kušic takes on the task of engaging with spaces and peoples not usually present in I…

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"Stuck in the Second Stage" by Kym B. Whitecar 8:08

1M ago8:08

8:08

– My warped resentment started after Dad died. We endured eye rolls and dagger-filled glares as we saw no other option. Kym B. Whitecar lives in Indian Trail, North Carolina, where she is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Lit. When she retired from education, she finally had the time to take a creative writing course, reigniting …

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Lina Pinto-García, "Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 1:04:34

1M ago1:04:34

1:04:34

In Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Lina Pinto-García delves into the relationship between war and disease, focusing on Colombian armed conflict and the skin disease known as cutaneous leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is transmitted through the bite of female sandflies. The most common manifestatio…