Podcast
University of Minnesota Press
Hosted by University of Minnesota Press · EN
Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more.
13episodes
Episodes
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Political solidarity and state power
2w ago00:54:46Tap to summarizeThe thwarted Central American revolutions during the latter half of the twentieth century marked a watershed in what had become a global anti-imperialist movement striving for a more egalitarian future. Examining a range of documentary, literary, and artistic works, including Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Héctor Tobar, Jennifer Harbury, and Horacio Castellanos Moya, States of Defeat looks at how left-wing intellectuals in the United States reckoned with the fallout from these defeats through wide-ranging creative expressions of indignation, cynicism, and grief. Here, author Eric A. Vázquez is joined in conversation with Maritza E. Cardenas and Jason Ruiz.Eric A. Vázquez is assistant professor in American studies and Latina/o/x studies at the University of Iowa and author of States of Defeat: US Imaginaries of Revolutionary Central America.Jason Ruiz is director of institute for latino studies and professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Porfirian Mexico and the Cultural Politics of Empire and Narcomedia: Latinidad, Popular Culture, and America’s War on Drugs. Maritza E. Cardenas is director of global studies and associate professor of English at the University of Arizona. She is author of Constituting Central American-Americans: Transnational Identities and the Politics of Dislocation.EPISODE REFERENCES:Blood on the Border / Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizEmpire’s Workshop / Greg GrandinThe Ruse of Repair / Patricia StuelkeLas Sandinistas! / filmJesse AlemánJennifer HarburyJean DonovanRigoberta MenchúThe Tattooed Soldier / Héctor TobarHoracio Castellanos MoyaDavid StollMaría Josefina Saldaña-PortilloDon White Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador archive at California State University NorthridgePRAISE FOR THE BOOK:"Insightful and brilliant, States of Defeat uses the defeat of the Central American revolutionaries by US–backed, brutal right-wing militaries to analyze the meaning of revolutionary failure for the United States."—María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, author of Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States "Eric A. Vázquez asks hard questions about what is at stake, who benefits, and what matters in the making of alliances across borders. Every chapter is rich with a nuanced account of anti-imperialist creativity and commitment."—Melani McAlister, author of Promises, Then the Storm: Notes on Memory, Protest, and the Israel–Gaza WarThe book States of Defeat: US Imaginaries of Revolutionary Central America by Eric A. Vázquez is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
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Refusing the machine.
3w ago00:45:28Tap to summarizeThe history of technology is often told as a history of progress. Thomas Dekeyser turns this story on its head, leading a journey to the critical junctures where people have rejected and tried to undo, rather than adopt, new technologies. In Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine, Dekeyser challenges readers to rethink the terms of our technological present and future. Here, Dekeyser is joined in conversation with Brian Merchant and Sarah Sharma.Thomas Dekeyser is a filmmaker and lecturer in human geography at the University of Southampton and author of Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine.Sarah Sharma is acting Vice Dean, Research and Program Innovation at the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto, where she is also professor of media theory at the ICCIT/Faculty of Information and director of the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology. Sharma is author of Insufferable Tools: Feminism Against Big Tech and In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics.Brian Merchant is author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech and The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone. He is a reporter in residence at the AI Now Institute, former technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times, co-founder and editor of Vice’s speculative fiction outlet TERRAFORM, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and Fast Company.EPISODE REFERENCES:Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985 essay)Film: Machines in FlamesTechno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
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Cinematic activism and solidarity politics in the US
Apr 2800:54:15Tap to summarizeFor decades, Arab American activists and allies have used film, video, and multimedia to mobilize support for the Palestinian cause in the United States. In Mainstreaming Palestine: Cinematic Activism and Solidarity Politics in the United States, a detailed history of cinema’s role within the broader solidarity movement, Umayyah Cable analyzes the various strands of cinematic activism that have helped move Palestinian liberation politics from the periphery and into the mainstream. Cable is joined here in conversation with Evelyn Alsultany, Keith Feldman, and Melani McAlister.Umayyah Cable is assistant professor of American culture and film, television, and media at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and author of Mainstreaming Palestine: Cinematic Activism and Solidarity Politics in the United States.Evelyn Alsultany is professor in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College and author of Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion and Arabs and Muslims in the Media.Keith Feldman is associate professor in the department of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley and author of A Shadow over Palestine.Melani McAlister is professor of American Studies and international affairs and director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. McAlister is author of Promises, Then the Storm, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders, and Epic Encounters.REFERENCES:-AAUG: Association of Arab American University Graduates-Telegram/Yasser Arafat-Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival-Erella Shadmi, “Women, Palestinians, Zionism: A Personal View.”-Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.”-Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art-Jean Baudrillard’s four stages of representation-Jonathan Glazer’s 2024 Oscar acceptance speech for The Zone of Interest-Film Workers for Palestine-BDS: Boycott, Divestment, and SanctionsFILM REFERENCES:David Koff’s Occupied PalestineJan Haaken and Jennifer Ruth’s The Palestine ExceptionMichael T. Workman and Kei Pritsker’s The EncampmentsBasel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor’s No Other LandMainstreaming Palestine: Cinematic Activism and Solidarity Politics in the United States by Umayyah Cable is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
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Cybercultural revolution in the 1960s.
Apr 1400:51:54Tap to summarizeIn the 1960s, artists, writers, and activists prefigured the wider discourse around automation and made it a central concern of their politics. Drawing upon James and Grace Lee Boggs’s notion of the cybercultural era, and examining the works of Martin Luther King Jr., Noah Purifoy, and the Black Panthers, Brian Bartell provides a crucial key to understanding the historical dynamics responsible for our technocapitalist, AI-driven present. Here, Bartell is joined in conversation with John Elrick.Brian Bartell teaches courses on politics and aesthetics, media studies, and race and technology studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles and at the California Institute of Technology. Bartell is author of On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution: Black Power and Capitalism in the 1960s.John Elrick is visiting assistant professor of geography at Vassar College. EPISODE REFERENCES:-From Counterculture to Cyberculture / Fred Turner-“The Negro and Cybernation,” James Boggs, speech delivered at the First Annual Conference on the Cybercultural Revolution, 1964.-Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution (AHC), The Triple Revolution (pamphlet), 1964.-National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, Report Vol. 1: Technology and the American Economy, 1966-Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century / Grace Lee Boggs-Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth, 1972-Ten Point Program, 1966 and 1972 (presented at Community Survival Conference, Oakland, CA); particularly, “People’s Community Control of Modern Technology” and Huey P. Newton’s “The Technology Question” within.-The Chosen Place, the Timeless People / Paule MarshallPRAISE FOR THE BOOK:"Incisive, original, and beautifully written, On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution exposes the interconnections between race, technology, and capitalism. Brian Bartell shows that the cybercultural revolution was central to the Black Power movement as it opened up avenues for envisioning freedom from the conditions of reproduction and labor under racial capitalism."—Neda Atanasoski"Highly relevant to the present moment, On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution presents a vital argument about the Black Power movement’s insights into the relationship between capitalism, technology, and racism. In so doing, Brian Bartell makes a fascinatingly original contribution to conversations about the role of automation in the ‘technocapitalist present.’"—Jonathan FlatleyOn the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution: Black Power and Capitalism in the 1960s by Brian Bartell is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
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Abolitionist thinking, practical realities, and radical change
Mar 1100:52:28Tap to summarizeFar from being unrealistic, abolition is an indispensable part of a realist politics. In the book Prison Abolition for Realists, Anna Terwiel examines the work of abolitionist thinkers and activists since the 1960s—Michel Foucault, Liat Ben-Moshe, Angela Y. Davis, and more—to argue that prison abolition is a realist political project. Terwiel is joined here in conversation with Kirstine Taylor. This conversation took place in late 2025. Access a transcript of this conversation: https://share.transistor.fm/s/0b209d97Anna Terwiel is assistant professor of political science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and codirector of Trinity’s Prison Education Project. Terwiel is author of Prison Abolition for Realists. Kirstine Taylor is associate professor of political science and the Center for Law, Justice & Culture at Ohio University. Taylor is author of Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State.EPISODE REFERENCES:Foucault / Discipline and PunishPrison Information GroupPrison+Neighborhood Arts/Education ProjectNils ChristieLouk HulsmanAngela DavisLiat Ben-Moshe / Decarcerating DisabilityEve Kosofsky SedgwickThomas MathiesenW. E. B. Du BoisMariame KabaErin R. Pineda / Seeing Like an ActivistCommunities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA)Praise for the book:“Both clearly written and timely in its subject matter, Prison Abolition for Realists offers a cogent way of thinking about abolition. Anna Terwiel intervenes in the debate over whether abolition is utopian in its aims and excellently frames her argument in the tradition of political realism.”—Ali Aslam, coauthor of Earthborn Democracy: A Political Theory of Entangled LifePrison Abolition for Realists by Anna Terwiel is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
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Helen Hoover's Place in the Woods
Mar 300:53:39Tap to summarizeDuring the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Helen Hoover’s stories and essays of life in the wilderness on northern Minnesota’s Gunflint Lake, published in popular magazines and several bestselling books (including The Gift of the Deer in 1966 and A Place in the Woods in 1969), found millions of fans and earned her accolades alongside nature writers like Sigurd Olson, Rachel Carson, Sally Carrighar, and Calvin Rutstrum. Hoover’s own unlikely history of leaving a corporate career in Chicago for a small cabin without electricity or running water is just one chapter of the remarkable life that David Hakensen describes in Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover. This first complete biography illuminates how Helen Hoover (1910–1984) made a place for herself and for countless readers in, as she put it, the world of her time. On October 20, 2025, Hakensen was joined in conversation with Annette Atkins at the Minnesota Historical Society. This is the full audio of their conversation. Access a transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/3abbd0a7David Hakensen is an award-winning public relations executive with more than forty years of experience. He has served on several nonprofit boards and was president of the executive council of the Minnesota Historical Society from 2018-2023.Annette Atkins is a scholar, teacher, public historian, and professor emerita at Saint John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Collegeville, Minnesota. Atkins is author of Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out.Praise for the book:"None of it was easy. None of it was a straight line. Much was laced with human paradox and contradiction and courage. David tells Helen’s remarkable story with grace and understanding, helping readers to discover the real woman behind the myth and why her place in the woods is still the stuff of dreams."—Douglas Wood, author of A Wild Path"A compelling portrait of an uncompromising artist. It is an excellent companion to her works and will surely assist a long-overdue Helen Hoover revival."—Ann McCutchan, author of The Life She Wished to LiveHer Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover is available from University of Minnesota Press.Thank you for listening.
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On gender and sport
Feb 1900:59:14Tap to summarizeAt age 60, Erica Rand decided to take up pairs figure skating. As two white queer adult skaters, Rand and her partner have come into direct contact with the interconnected binarisms that shape athletic participation, from oversimplified distinctions between cis and trans to the artificial division between athletic and artistic. Rand’s book Skating Away from the Binary is a call to transform gender norms in sport. Here, Rand is joined in conversation with Travers and Mary Louis Adams. This conversation was recorded in December 2025. Access a transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/5ce9d8f8Erica Rand is professor of art and visual culture and of gender and sexuality studies at Bates College. She is author of several books, including Skating Away from the Binary ; Barbie’s Queer Accessories; The Ellis Island Snow Globe; Red Nails Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the Ice; and The Small Book of Hip Checks On Queer Gender, Race, and Writing. She has served on the editorial boards of Radical Teacher and Salacious and co-edits the series Writing Matters! for Duke University Press. In a piece for Global Sports Matters called “Skating Out of the Binary” and in “At the Ice Rink, My Feet End in Knives,” she describes training in a gender non-conforming adult figure skating pairs team, with pairs partner Anna Kellar of the Future of Figure Skating podcast, as they participate in growing efforts to expand inclusion in the sport—a sport mired in racialized heteronormativity that is also being transformed through critically engaged practice and institutional change.Mary Louise Adams is a retired professor from the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Adams is author of Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity and the Limits of Sport and The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality.Travers is a professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University. They are author of The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) are Creating a Gender Revolution; Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sports; and Writing the Public in Cyberspace: Redefining Inclusion on the Net.EPISODE REFERENCES:Podcast, Anna Kellar, The Future of Figure SkatingDanya Lagos, American Journal of Sociology: “Has There Been a Transgender Tipping Point?”Eric A. Stanley, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Gender Self-DeterminationSkating Away from the Binary by Erica Rand is available in the Forerunners series from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available at manifold.umn.edu. Thank you for listening.
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Navigating and challenging deep-seated racial injustices in the Midwest.
Feb 1101:01:10Tap to summarizeMovidas are subtle yet strategic actions through which Latina/x artists forge solidarities, mobilize for justice, and reclaim space. In Place-Keepers, Jessica Lopez Lyman centers Latina/x women and gender nonconforming artists from Chicana/Mexicana, US Central American, and Caribbean backgrounds and examines how these artists respond to systemic oppression through public performances and behind-the-scenes negotiations with the state, nonprofits, and other institutions—establishing a crucial framework for understanding art as activism. Here, Lopez Lyman is joined in conversation with Kristie Soares and Karma Chaves. Access a transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/97747e66Jessica Lopez Lyman is an interdisciplinary performance artist and Xicana feminist scholar, assistant professor in the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of Minnesota, and author of Place-Keepers: Latina/x Art, Performance, and Organizing in the Twin Cities.Kristie Soares is associate professor of Women & Gender Studies and Co-Director of LGBTQ Studies at University of Colorado Boulder. Soares is author of Playful Protest: The Political Work of Joy in Latinx Media.Karma Chávez is Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and Chair of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Chavez is author of The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance; Palestine on the Air; and Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities. EPISODE REFERENCES:Laurie CarlosMaría Isa Pérez-VegaStephanie Lee BatisteMethodology of the Oppressed / Chela SandovalFEATURED ARTISTS in Place-Keepers:Teresa OrtizGuadalupe Castillo (La Lupe)Deborah RamosAdriana Rimpel (Lady Midnight)María Isa Pérez-VegaLorena DuarteOlivia Levins HoldenMagdalena KaluzaRebekah Crisanta de YbarraMaria Cristina TaveraNOTE: This podcast episode was recorded in December 2025. More recently, Jessica Lopez Lyman spoke with Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan on LitHub’s fiction/non/fiction podcast about the history of state violence in Minnesota.Place-Keepers: Latina/x Art, Performance, and Organizing in the Twin Cities by Jessica Lopez Lyman is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
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The perilous edge between patriotism and fascism
Jan 2800:59:17Tap to summarizeThe work of Maria Janion, one of Eastern Europe’s most profound intellectuals, who witnessed the rise of authoritarian nationalism in Poland, German occupation during World War II, Soviet control, and Poland’s uneasy integration into the West, explores this fine line. Janion’s writings have been gathered by Marta Figlerowicz into the recently published volume The Bad Child: A Maria Janion Reader, and Figlerowicz is joined here in conversation with Noah Feldman to talk about Janion’s writing, which offers sharp insights into how societies develop and assert their identities and histories—often at the cost of the people. There are clear parallels here to current conditions and events. Please note that this episode was recorded in October 2025. Access a transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/75515cf3Maria Janion (1926–2020) was the greatest Polish leftist intellectual of her generation. The author of twenty-three books and hundreds of articles and essays, she mentored and inspired several generations of Eastern European scholars and political activists. During her life, Janion held appointments at several Polish academic institutions, including the University of Gdańsk and the Institute of Literary Studies in Warsaw.Marta Figlerowicz is professor of comparative literature at Yale University. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and author of Flat Protagonists and Spaces of Feeling as well as more than a hundred articles, reviews, and essays. Her translations from Polish have appeared in PMLA and The Paris Review.Noah Feldman is the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University. Feldman is author of ten books, including To Be a Jew Today, and host of the podcast Deep Background with Noah Feldman.Episode references:Adam MickiewiczOlga TokarczukEdward SaidIsaiah BerlinPraise for the book:“Maria Janion’s writing is foundational to so many currents of contemporary Central European thought—around nations and nationalism, gender and genre, everyday politics and the political writ large—that her invisibility in English has long struck those of us privileged to know her work as a tragedy, if not a crime. This book belongs on the shelf of every humanist.”—Benjamin Paloff, author of Worlds Apart“The remarkable creativity, energy, and erudition of Maria Janion shine forth in these essays.”—Sianne Ngai, University of ChicagoThe Bad Child: A Maria Janion Reader, edited by Marta Figlerowicz, available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
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Anti-mafia organizing and solidarity movements in Italy
Jan 1300:44:25Tap to summarizeFor 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. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among anti-mafia alliances in Campania, Sicily, and other parts of Italy, Christina Jerne explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal economies from proliferating. Jerne is joined in conversation with Deborah Puccio-Den and Trine Mygind Korsby. Access a transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/9dc8cf86Christina Jerne is associate professor in the Department of Scandinavian Studies and Experience Economy at Aarhus University, Denmark. Jerne is author of Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism and coeditor and translator of Against the Mafia: The Classic Italian Writings.Deborah Puccio-Den is a political anthropologist and research professor at the National Center for Scientific Research and the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France. She is author of Mafiacraft: An Ethnography of Deadly Silence.Trine Mygind Korsby is assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and currently a Marie Curie fellow at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY).REFERENCES:Mafiacraft: An Ethnography of Deadly Silence / Deborah Puccio-DenUmberto SantinoGiovanni FalconeAudre LordeJ. K. Gibson-GrahamBruno LatourJean Luc NancyGabriel TardeGilles DeleuzeFelix GuattariAddiopizzo Praise for the book:"Placing human experience at the center of collective action, Opposition by Imitation presents radically new directions for thinking about social movements. Christina Jerne captures both the fragility and strength of the struggle against mafia economies, powerfully demonstrating how anti-mafia activism opens up space for non-mafia relationships and economies to flourish."—Kevin McDonald, Middlesex UniversityOpposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism by Christina Jerne is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
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