Afleveringen
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Goodbye, Tahrir Square: Coming of Age as a Jew of the Nile (Cherry Orchard Books, 2025) is a first-person memoir written from the standpoint of a Jewish boy growing up in Egypt during the watershed years that shaped the Middle East into the powder keg it is today.
Described as the “Holden Caulfield of the Nile” for his rebellious attitude, the boy witnessed—between the ages of seven to fourteen—the 1952 revolution that overthrew King Farouk and gave rise to the dictatorship of Gamal Abdel Nasser; the 1956 Suez war that marked the end of the British empire; and in its wake the destruction of the Jewish community that had lived in Egypt since Biblical times.
Though set in times of revolution and war, Goodbye, Tahrir Square is not a political book. It is the story of a boy whose close-knit extended Sephardic family, full of rich traditions and colorful characters, is suddenly torn asunder by the forces of revolution and war. A man-child coming of age like a wild cactus in the rubble of the past, overcoming a hostile environment, forging friendships that transcend ethnic and religious animus, and finding his own identity as he awakens to literature, history, art, archaeology, and the magic of love and sex.
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What were two Irish sisters doing in Russia during the early years of the nineteenth century, editing the French-language memoirs of a princess who had been a close confidante of Catherine the Great? Author Alexis Wolf is in conversation with Duncan McCargo about a remarkable transnational story she has unearthed through meticulous archival research.
Transnational Women Writers in the Wilmot Coterie, 1798-1840 (Boydell Press, 2024) highlights the centrality of non-canonical, middle-ranking women writers to the production of literature and culture in Britain, Ireland, Europe and Russia in the late eighteenth century. The Irish writers and editors Katherine (1773-1824) and Martha Wilmot (1775-1873) left a unique record of middle-ranking women's literary practices and experiences of travel in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Their manuscripts are notable for their vivid portrayal of the era's political conflicts, capturing a flight from Ireland during the Irish Rebellion (1798), time spent in Paris during the Peace of Amiens (1801-03), and extended residences in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. However, in their accounts of these key European events, the Wilmots' manuscripts, and published work, showcase their participation in a startling range of self-educating activities, including travel writing, biography, antiquarianism, early ethnographic observation, language acquisition, translation practices and editorial work. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book explores the collaborative relationships formed by women participating in cosmopolitan networks beyond the typical locations of the Grand Tour. Across their travels, the sisters met, engaged with, and learned from numerous key women of the time, including Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, Margaret King, Lady Mount Cashell and Helen Maria Williams. In this first full-length study to focus on the literary and cultural exchanges surrounding the Wilmot sisters, Wolf showcases how manuscript circulation, coterie engagement and transnational travel provided avenues for women to engage with the intellectual discourses from which they were often excluded.
Alexis Wolf is an independent scholar of eighteenth and nineteenth century literature.
Duncan McCargo is President's Chair in Global Affairs and a Professor of English (by courtesy) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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A celebrity decorator with blue hair. A single mother who advised JFK in the Oval Office. A Christian nudist with a passion for almond milk.
As explored by Dr. Yves Rees in Travelling to Tomorrow: The Modern Women Who Sparked Australia’s Romance with America (New South, 2024), a century ago, ten Australian women did something remarkable. Throwing convention to the wind, they headed across the Pacific to make their fortune. In doing so, they reoriented Australia towards the United States years before politicians began to lumber down the same path.
For the artist Mary Cecil Allen, this meant spreading the word about American abstract expressionism. For the naturopath Alice Caporn, it meant evangelising fruit juices and salads. For the swimmer Isabel Letham, it was teaching synchronised swimming. Others imported the latest thinking in dentistry, fashion, design, economics, law, music, medicine and more. They were rebels, they were trailblazers, they were disruptors. Individually, they have extraordinary stories; together, they change the narrative of Australian history.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have—now more than ever—come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few standout investors. And amidst the BlackRocks, Vanguards, and Berkshire Hathaways stands arguably the most iconoclastic of them all: SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son.
In Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son (Atria, 2024), the first Western biography of Son, the self-professed unicorn hunter, we go behind the scenes of the world’s most monied halls of power in New York, Tokyo, Silicon Valley, Saudi Arabia, and beyond to see how Son’s firm SoftBank has defied conventional wisdom and imposing odds to push global tech and commerce into the future.
From the dizzying highs of Uber, DoorDash, and Slack to the epic lows of WeWork and tech-infused dogwalking app Wag Son and SoftBank have been at the center of cutting-edge capitalism’s absolute peaks and valleys. In the process, Son, son of a pachinko kingpin who grew up in a slum in Japan, has been a hero, a villain, and even a meme-ified hero to the internet tech- and finance-bro set all at once.
Based on in-depth research and eye-opening interviews, Gambling Man is an unforgettable character study and alarming true story of twenty-first-century commerce that will stick with you long after you turn the final page.
Lionel Barber is the former editor of the Financial Times. As editor, he interviewed many of the world’s leaders in business and politics, including US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Barber has co-written several books and has lectured widely on foreign policy, transatlantic relations, and economics.
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Where is the "life" in scholarly life? Is it possible to find in academic writing, so often abstracted from the everyday? How might religion bridge that gap? In Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History (Oxford UP, 2024), author Anand Venkatkrishnan explores these questions within the intellectual history of a popular Hindu scripture, the Bhagavata Purana, spanning the precolonial period of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries in India. He shows that Brahmin intellectuals writing in Sanskrit were neither impervious to the quotidian religious practices of bhakti, nor uninterested in its politics of language and caste. They supported, contested, and repurposed the social commentary of bhakti even in highly technical works of Sanskrit knowledge, and their personal religious commitments featured in a language and genre of writing that deliberately isolated itself from worldly matters. The religion of bhakti bound together the transregional discourse of Sanskrit learning and the local devotional practices of everyday people, though not in a top-down manner. Rather, vernacular ways of being, believing, and belonging in the world could and did reshape the contours of Sanskrit intellectuality.
Venkatkrishnan revisits the historiography of the Bhagavata Purana to expand our knowledge of the many different religious and philosophical communities that interpreted and laid claim to the themes of the text. While most associated with the traditions of Vaisnavism, Love in the Time of Scholarship brings to light how the Bhagavata was also studied by Saivas, Saktas, and others on the periphery of the text's history.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International licence.
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Today I talked to Ben Baer and Smaran Dayal about About Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain.
Pioneering Indian Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain wrote speculative fiction, manifestoes, radical reportage, and incisive essays that transformed her experience of enforced segregation into unique interventions against gender oppression everywhere. Her radical imagination links the realities of living in a British colony to the technological and scientific breakthroughs of her time, the effects of hauntingly pervasive systems of sexual domination, and collective dreams of the future, forging a visionary, experimental body of work. Alongside Rokeya’s pathbreaking feminist science fiction story “Sultana’s Dream,” this volume features fresh and exciting new translations of her key Bengali writings and a superbly informative introduction to her life and work. If her contemporary B. R. Ambedkar urged the “annihilation of caste,” Rokeya demands nothing less than the annihilation of sexism, with education as the primary instrument of this revolution. Her brilliant wit and creativity reflect profoundly on the complexities of undoing deep-seated gender supremacy and summon her readers to imagine hitherto undreamed freedoms.
ROKEYA SAKHAWAT HOSSAIN (1880–1932) was born in present-day Bangladesh, then part of colonial India. Despite being deprived of formal education, she became a prominent writer, activist, and educator. The web of her life spanned from the minutiae of running a girls’ school in Kolkata to struggles for women’s emancipation on the national and world stage.
Arnab Dutta Roy is Assistant Professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University.
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George Orwell is sometimes read as disinterested in (if not outright hostile) to philosophy. Yet a fair reading of Orwell's work reveals an author whose work was deeply informed by philosophy and who often revealed his philosophical sympathies. Orwell's written works are of ethical significance, but he also affirmed and defended substantive ethical claims about humanism, well-being, normative ethics, free will and moral responsibility, moral psychology, decency, equality, liberty, justice, and political morality.
In George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality (Oxford UP, 2023), philosopher Peter Brian Barry avoids a narrow reading of Orwell that considers only a few of his best-known works and instead considers the entirety of Orwell's corpus, including his fiction, journalism, essays, book reviews, diaries, and correspondence, contending that there are ethical commitments discernible throughout his work that ground some of his best-known pronouncements and positions.
While Orwell is often read as a humanist, egalitarian, and socialist, too little attention has been paid to the nuanced versions of those doctrines that he endorsed and the philosophical sympathies that led him to embrace them. Barry illuminates Orwell's philosophical sympathies and contributions that have either gone unnoticed or been underappreciated. Philosophers interested in Orwell now have a text that explores many of the philosophical themes in his work and Orwell's readers now have a text that makes the case for regarding him as a worthy philosopher as well as one of the greatest Anglophone writers of the 20th century.
Peter Brian Barry is Professor of Philosophy and the Finkbeiner Endowed Professor in Ethics at Saginaw Valley State University. He is the author of Evil and Moral Psychology and The Fiction of Evil as well as several papers in ethics, applied ethics, and social and political philosophy. He has contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell, and George Orwell Studies.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.
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This volume utilises the personal papers of Sir Ronald Storrs, as well as other archival materials, to make a microhistorical investigation of his period as Governor of Jerusalem between 1917 and 1926.
It builds upon Edward Said’s work on the Orientalist ‘determining imprint’ by arguing that Storrs took a deeply personal approach to governing the city; one determined by his upbringing, his education in the English private school system and his service as a British official in Colonial Egypt. Burnham recognises the influence of these experiences on Storrs’ perceptions of and attitudes towards Jerusalem, identifying how these formative years manifested themselves on the city and in the Governor’s interactions with Jerusalemites of all backgrounds and religious beliefs. It also highlights the restrictions placed on Storrs’ approach by his British superiors, Palestinians and the Zionist movement, alongside the limitations imposed by his own attitudes and worldview. Placing Storrs’ personality at the centre of discussion on early Mandate Jerusalem exposes a nuanced and complex picture of how personality and politics collided to influence its everyday life and built environment.
Sir Ronald Storrs: Personality and Policy in Mandate Palestine, 1917-1926 (Routledge, 2024) is aimed at historians and students of the late-Ottoman Empire and British Mandate in Palestine, colonialism and imperialism, and indeed microhistory.
Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at [email protected]. Twitter and IG: @robbyref Website: www.robertomazza.org
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How did the research universities of the Enlightenment come into being? And what debt do they owe to scholars of the previous era? Focusing on the career of German polymath Johann Daniel Major (1634–93), Curating the Enlightenment: Johann Daniel Major and the Experimental Century (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Vera Keller uncovers how late seventeenth-century scholars crafted the research university as a haven for critical inquiry in defiance of political and economic pressures. Abandoning the surety of established intellectual practice, this 'experimental century' saw Major and his peers reshaping fragments of knowledge into new perspectives. Across new disciplines, from experimental philosophy to archaeology and museology, they reexamined what knowledge was, who it was for, and how it was to be stored, managed, accessed, judged, and transformed. Although later typecast as Baroque obstacles to be overcome by the Enlightenment, these academics arranged knowledge in dynamic infrastructures that encouraged its further advancement in later generations, including our own. This study examines these seventeenth-century practices as part of a continuous intellectual tradition and reconceptualizes our understanding of the Enlightenment.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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The Great Gatsby is often called the great American novel. Emblematic of an entire era, F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic tale of illicit desire, grand illusions, and lost dreams is rendered in a lyrical prose that revives a vanished world of glittering parties and vibrant jazz, where money and deceit walk hand in hand. Rich in humor, sharply observant of status and class, the book tells the story of Jay Gatsby's efforts to keep his faith - in money, in love, in all the promises of America - amid the chaos and conflict of life on Long Island's Gold Coast during the Roaring Twenties.
The Cambridge Centennial Edition of The Great Gatsby (Cambridge UP, 2025) presents the established version of the text in a collector's volume replete with social, cultural, and historical context, and numerous illustrations. The authoritative introduction examines persistent myths about Fitzgerald, his greatest work, and the age he embodies, while offering fresh ways of reading this iconic work.
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Henry Christophe was born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, and fought to overthrow the British in North America before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue—as Haiti was then called—to end slavery. He rose to power and became their king. In his time, he was popular and famous the world over. So how did he become an enigma?
In The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, Dr. Marlene L. Daut reclaims the life story of this controversial revolutionary and only king of Haiti, drawing from a trove of previously overlooked sources to paint a captivating history of his life and the awe-inspiring kingdom he built. Peeling back the layers of myth and misconception reveals a man driven by both noble ideals and profound flaws, as unforgettable as he is enigmatic. More than just a biography, The First and Last King of Haiti is an exploration of power, ambition, and the human spirit. From his pivotal role in the Haitian Revolution to his coronation as king and eventual demise, this book is testament to the enduring allure of those who dare to defy the odds and shape the course of nations. The First and Last King of Haiti is a story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval. Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon’s forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, euniteng with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe—after nine years of his rule as King Henry I—shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.
Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated? How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti’s first ruler, Dessalines? What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President Pétion in the south?
The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.
Our guest is: Dr. Marlene Daut, who is Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University. Her books include Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism; Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865; Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution; and The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe. She is co-editor of the Haitian Revolutionary Fictions: An Anthology, and her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation, Essence Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, The Conversation, New Literary History, Nineteenth-Century Literature, and Comparative Literature, among others. She is the co-creator and co-editor of H-Net Commons’ digital platform, H-Haiti.
Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast.
Listeners might also enjoy:
We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance
Never Caught, with Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Selling Anti-Slavery
Running From Bondage
Leading from the Margins
Shoutin in the Fire
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When he was six years old, Roger Penrose discovered a sundial in a clearing near his house. Through that machine made of light, shadow, and time, Roger glimpsed a “world behind the world” of transcendently beautiful geometry. It spurred him on a journey to become one of the world’s most influential mathematicians, philosophers, and physicists.
Penrose would prove the limitations of general relativity, set a new agenda for theoretical physics, and astound colleagues and admirers with the elegance and beauty of his discoveries. However, as Patchen Barss documents in The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius (Basic Books, 2024), success came at a price: He was attuned to the secrets of the universe, but struggled to connect with loved ones, especially the women who care for or worked with him.
Both erudite and poetic, The Impossible Man draws on years of research and interviews, as well as previously unopened archives to present a moving portrait of Penrose the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and Roger the human being. It reveals not just the extraordinary life of Roger Penrose, but asks who gets to be a genius, and who makes the sacrifices that allow one man to be one.
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Michael Ray Richardson was a star in the making. After a stellar collegiate career at the University of Montana, where he was voted first team All-Big Sky Conference as a sophomore, junior, and senior, the future seemed bright. Taken fourth overall in the 1978 NBA Draft by the New York Knicks, Richardson was billed as “the next Walt Frazier.”
In just his second professional season, he became the third player in NBA history to lead the league in both assists and steals—both Knicks team records. Richardson would also notch four All-Star appearances and twice being named to the All-Defensive team over eight seasons between the Knicks, Golden State Warriors, and New Jersey Nets.
But during that time, his time off the court was having a bigger impact on his career than what he was doing on the court.
On February 25, 1986, after three violations of the league’s drug policy, NBA commissioner David Stern would ban Richardson from continuing his professional career. His struggles with drugs and alcohol were well documented, and someone considered the next big thing became the first player in league history to be receive a lifetime ban.
For most people, this would be the end to their story—one in which their substance abuse would take over and their downfall inevitable.
However, that was not in the cards for Michael Ray Richardson.
In Banned: How I Squandered an All-Star NBA Career Before Finding My Redemption (Sports Publishing, 2024), Richardson opens up about his life both on and off the basketball court, discussing all the highs and lows that made him both a hero and a villain. Though being reinstated to the NBA in 1988, he would instead have stints in the United States Basketball League and CBA before taking his talents to Europe. With stints in Italy, Croatia, and France, he would lead his teams to numerous championships in his decade-plus overseas.
Now back in the states and running youth basketball clinics, Banned is Richardson’s first opportunity to open up about his life, showing that though you may get knocked down—even from self-inflicted actions—the only person that can count you out is yourself. With forewords from Hall of Famers George “The Iceman” Gervin and Nancy Lieberman, this is the story of the Michael Ray Richardson as only he can tell it.
Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won. His next book, a biography of Moses Malone will be published in 2025. You can reach Paul at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.
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Our book is: Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts To Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany (Citadel Press, 2025) by Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham, which is an inspiring new narrative of the first woman to serve in a president’s cabinet, the longest-serving Labor Secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. In March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Frances Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor by FDR. As Hitler rose to power, thousands of German-Jewish refugees and their loved ones reached out to the INS—then part of the Department of Labor—applying for immigration to the United States, writing letters that began “Dear Miss Perkins . . .” Perkins’s early experiences working in Chicago’s famed Hull House and as a firsthand witness to the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire shaped her determination to advocate for immigrants and refugees. As Secretary of Labor, she wrestled widespread antisemitism and isolationism, finding creative ways to work around quotas and restrictive immigration laws. Diligent, resilient, empathetic, yet steadfast, she persisted on behalf of the desperate when others refused to act.
Our guest is: Dr Rebecca Brenner Graham who is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University. Previously, she taught at the Madeira School and American University. She has a PhD in history and an MA in public history from American University, and a BA in history and philosophy from Mount Holyoke College. In 2023, she was awarded a Cokie Roberts Fellowship from the National Archives Foundation and a Rubenstein Center Research Fellowship from the White House Historical Association. Her writing has been published in The Washington Post, Time, Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.
Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.
Listeners may enjoy this playlist:
Secret Harvests
Who Gets Believed
Women's Activism and Sophonisba Breckinridge
The House on Henry Street
Leading from the Margins
Hope for the Humanities PhD
Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!
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We interview Dr. Joel Whitebook, philosopher and psychoanalyst about his book Freud: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge UP, 2017). Dr. Whitebook works in Critical Theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, developing that tradition with his clinical and philosophical knowledge of recent advances in psychoanalytic theory.
The life and work of Sigmund Freud continue to fascinate general and professional readers alike. Joel Whitebook here presents the first major biography of Freud since the last century, taking into account recent developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice, gender studies, philosophy, cultural theory, and more. Offering a radically new portrait of the creator of psychoanalysis, this book explores the man in all his complexity alongside an interpretation of his theories that cuts through the stereotypes that surround him. The development of Freud's thinking is addressed not only in the context of his personal life, but also in that of society and culture at large, while the impact of his thinking on subsequent issues of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and social theory is fully examined. Whitebook demonstrates that declarations of Freud's obsolescence are premature, and, with his clear and engaging style, brings this vivid figure to life in compelling and readable fashion.
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Amy Aronson is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Fordham University and former editor at Working Woman and Ms. magazines. Her biography Chrystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life (Oxford University Press, 2019) gives us the life of a women’s rights activist, labor lawyer, radical pacifist, writer and co-founder of what became the Civil Liberties Union. Her life was shaped by key relationships including with her mother Annis Ford Eastman and a close relationship with her brother Max Eastman, editor of the socialist magazine The Masses. Subsequently with her brother, she would launch The Liberator. Eastman spoke and wrote about a variety of social and political problems and was threatened by censorship and economic hardship. One of her chief concerns was how women could combine meaningful work with family life based on egalitarian ideals of independence and freedom. She attempted to live out her feminist ideals by redefining her marriage, motherhood and career. Chrystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life offers a vivid portrait of a modern feminist navigating the hazards of private and public life as it unfolded in the progressive era.
Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her current research project is on the cultural history of feminist thought seen through the emblematic life and work of Simone de Beauvoir.
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What were the key ideas and influences on Michel Foucault’s early career? In The Early Foucault (Polity Press, 2021), Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick and author of the Progressive Geographies blog, charts Foucault’s formative intellectual years leading up to the publication of the ground-breaking The History of Madness. The book uses a range of new archival material, much of which has been only recently accessible, to show the influence of teachers, mentors, and colleagues, as well as Foucault’s practice as an academic and writer during the 1950s and early 1960s. Telling the story of the possible intellectual trajectories, in psychology and philosophy, Foucault might have followed, along with a clear examination of the roots of his later work, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences.
Dave O'Brien is Chancellor's Fellow, Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Edinburgh's College of Art.
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As a novelist, short story author, screenwriter, and Nobel laureate, William Faulkner looms large in modern American literature. Yet the very range of his work and the sources for his rich literary worlds often defy easy assessment. In The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934 (University of Virginia Press, 2020), Carl Rollyson uses both an extensive range of archival collections and Faulkner’s wide-ranging literary output to assess the author’s life and the development of his many famous works. Growing up in Mississippi, young William absorbed his family’s tales and the larger history of the region to which it was tied. Yet it took Faulkner’s journeys outside of his community – first to Canada to train as a pilot for the Royal Air Force, then his extended visits to New York and Europe – to gain the perspective necessary to best use them in his writing. After an early foray into poetry Faulkner focused on writing prose, emerging by the end of the 1920s as an acclaimed author of novels and short stories. As Rollyson shows, this fame brought Faulkner to Hollywood, where he demonstrated quickly his ability to write as well for the rapidly emerging medium of talking pictures.
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At the end of the American Revolution, Elizabeth Freeman was an enslaved widow and mother living in Massachusetts. Hearing the words of the new Massachusetts state constitution which declared liberty and equality for all, she sought the help of a young lawyer named Theodore Sedgwick, later Speaker of the House and one of America's leading Federalist politicians. The lawsuit that she and Sedgwick pursued would bring freedom to her and her daughter, as well as thousands of other enslaved people.
After leaving her enslaver's family to work for the family of Theodore Sedgwick, she effectively became the foster mother to his seven children when his wife Pamela became a chronic invalid, enabling Sedgwick to pursue his political career. Two of his sons would credit her with saving their lives. His daughter Catharine Maria Sedgwick, one of the most famous female novelists of the early decades of the nineteenth century, would make her the model for one of her most celebrated heroines. A Revolutionary Woman: Elizabeth Freeman and the Abolition of Slavery in the North (McFarland, 2024) details Elizabeth Freeman's life and the far-reaching influence of her battle for freedom.
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The figure of Sigmund Freud has captivated the Western imagination like few others. One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Studies on Hysteria, the good doctor from Vienna continues to stir controversy in institutions, academic circles, and nuclear households across the world.
Perhaps Freud’s sharpest and most adamant critic, Frederick Crews has been debating Freud’s legacy for over thirty years. His latest work, Freud: The Making of an Illusion (Picador, 2018) challenges us with an extensive psychological profile of the legend here revealed as scam artist. What some analysts might argue to be a 750 page character assassination, Crews maintains is simply a recitation of facts which leaves readers to draw their own conclusions. One might wonder if the story of facts that is conveyed is not itself a counter myth.
Was Freud a megalomaniacal, greedy, cocaine-addled opportunist and psychoanalysis a pseudoscience that has reigned tyrannically over twentieth century thought? Making use of Freud’s extensive letters to Martha Bernays, Crews paints a “damning portrait” (Esquire) of a money hungry, adulterous, and uncaring man.
How can this portrait be reconciled with the radically meaningful and deeply transformative process many of us know psychoanalysis to be? Is the tyranny of rationality preferable to the tyranny of myth? Does the unmaking of the myth of the man undo the gift of his work?
In this interview Crews responds to questions of what it means to have an empirical attitude, how we should “test” the process of healing, what’s so tempting about Freud, and what should become of psychoanalysis today. Meticulously researched, the Crews of the Freud wars is back again, and he’s going in for the kill shot.
Cassandra B. Seltman is a writer, psychoanalyst, and researcher in NYC. [email protected]
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