Épisodes

  • Adi Mahalel, "The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism" (SUNY Press, 2023)
    May 26 2024
    In The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism (SUNY Press, 2023), Adi Mahalel presents Yiddish and Hebrew writer I. L. Peretz (1852–1915) in a new radical light we've never seen him in before. Conceived in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the 2011/12 Occupy Wall Street movement and social protests in Israel/Palestine, and against the backdrop of the Bernie Sander's campaigns in the United States, Mahalel revisits the radical period of the 1890s and recasts Peretz as an "organic intellectual" (Antonio Gramsci) of the Eastern European Jewish working class complementing the political work of the incipient socialist, diaspora nationalist movement of the Jewish Labor Bund. By offering close readings of the "radical" Peretz in Yiddish and Hebrew and following a partly chronological, partly thematic scheme, this study traces Peretz's radicalism from its inception through the various ways in which it was synchronically expressed during this intense period of history. It shows how this writer-cum-activist became instrumental in the realm of culture in the rise of ethno-class-consciousness among the Eastern European Jewish working class at the turn century. Adi Mahalel received his doctoral degree in Hebrew and Yiddish Studies at Columbia University and is Visiting Assistant Professor of Yiddish Studies. His articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as AJS REVIEW, Studies in American Jewish Literature, Israel Studies Review, and Kesher: Journal of Media and Communications History in Israel and the Jewish World. Mahalel was a culture columnist at the Yiddish Forward. Miriam Chorley-Schulz is an Assistant Professor and Mokin Fellow of Holocaust Studies at the University of Oregon and the co-founder of the EU-funded project We Refugees. Digital Archive on Refugeedom, Past and Present. She holds a Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University and was the Ray D. Wolfe Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre of Jewish Studies and the Centre of Transnational and Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h et 10 min
  • Christine Abigail L. Tan, "Freedom's Frailty: Self-Realization in the Neo-Daoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang's Zhuangzhi" (SUNY Press, 2024)
    May 21 2024
    Christine Tan argues that the most fruitful way to read the Zhuangzi, if one is seeking political and ethical insight, is through the Jin Dynasty commentator Guo Xiang. In Freedom’s Frailty: Self-Realization in the Neo-Daoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang’s Zhuangzi (SUNY Press, 2024), she lays out her reasoning for this position, offering her interpretation of Guo’s conception of freedom in relationship to Anglo-European philosophers like Isaiah Berlin. Explaining what she calls Guo’s “logic of convergence,” on which opposites are brought together, Tan unpacks Guo’s hermeneutic approach to the Zhuangzi and his use of self-realization (zide) as a tool to bring about political transformation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 min
  • Rachelle Winkle-Wagner, "The Chosen We: Black Women's Empowerment in Higher Education" (SUNY Press, 2023)
    May 12 2024
    The Chosen We: Black Women's Empowerment in Higher Education (SUNY Press, 2023) elevates the oral histories of 105 accomplished, college-educated Black women who earned success despite experiencing reprehensible racist and sexist barriers. The central argument is that these women succeeded in and beyond college by developing a Chosen We—a community with one another. The book builds on their words and insights to offer a powerful rethinking of educational success that moves away from individualistic and competitive models and instead imagines success as a result of recognizing what people owe to one another. It also uncovers the importance of the type of institutions that students attend for higher education, comparing Black women's experiences not only by region and era but also by whether they attended a predominantly White institution (PWI) or a historically Black college or university (HBCU). The Chosen We features theoretical and methodological exemplars for how to conduct research across lines of difference. The Black women's oral histories shared here manifest the wisdom from which many groups in the United States might benefit—that liberation is only found through community. Rachelle Winkle-Wagner is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the coauthor (with Angela M. Locks) of Diversity and Inclusion on Campus: Supporting Students of Color in College, and the author of The Unchosen We: Black Women and Identity in Higher Education, among other books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    38 min
  • Richard Olsen-Harbich, "Sun, Sea, Soil, Wine: Winemaking on the North Fork of Long Island" (SUNY Press, 2024)
    Apr 17 2024
    With his new book Sun, Sea, Soil, Wine: Winemaking on the North Fork of Long Island (SUNY Press, 2024), Richard Olsen-Harbich, Long Island's longest-tenured winemaker, weighs in on what makes the North Fork so unique for fine wine production. He shares his journey through the intricate art of winemaking – a tale of dedication, passion, and the remarkable bond between the sun-soaked earth, the sea-kissed vines, and the creation of exceptional wines. The artfully delves into the rich history, distinct terroir, and the stories behind some of the region's most celebrated vintages. Talking to New Books Network, Olsen-Harbich discusses the book, delving into the environmental elements that make the North Fork an idyllic location for great winemaking. He provides expert insights into the impact of climate change, the natural wine trend, and the genetically modified plant debate. In addition, he offers his views on restaurant wine programs, books for aspiring winemakers, and the best wineries to visit in the region. Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger at Vittlesvamp.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 min
  • Paul Hansen, "Hokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan" (SUNY Press, 2024)
    Apr 3 2024
    As an ethnography of a Japanese dairy farm while having theoretical values going beyond the specific context, Hokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan (SUNY Press, 2024) offers a historical and ethnographic examination of the rapid industrialization of the dairy industry in Tokachi, Hokkaido. The book begins with a history of dairy farming and consumption in Hokkaido from a macro perspective, mapping the transition from survival to subsistence and then from mixed family farms to monoculture and “mega” industrial operations. It then narrows the focus to examine concrete changes in a Tokachi-area dairying community that has undergone rapid sociocultural upheaval over the last three decades, with shifts in human relationships alongside changes in human and cow connections through new technologies. In the final chapters, the scope is further narrowed to a detailed history and ethnography of a single industrializing dairy farm and the morphing cast of individuals attached to it, centering on their idiosyncratic searches for economic, social, and even ontological security in what is popularly considered a peripheral region and industry. The culmination of over fifteen years of ethnographic, policy, and historical research, Hokkaido Dairy Farm argues that the dairy industry in Japan has always been entwined with notions of Otherness and security seeking, notably in terms of frontiers. Paul Hansen is professor in the Department of International Resource Sciences at Akita University in Japan. He is a socio-cultural anthropologist with a focus on Japan and Jamaica, social theory in relation to identity, affect, embodiment, posthumanism, cosmopolitan studies, ecology and animal-human-technology relationships. He is also interested in food and musicology. He is co-editor (with Blai Guarné) of Escaping Japan: Reflections on Estrangement and Exile in the Twenty-First Century (2018, Routledge). Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    49 min
  • Tulasi Srinivas, "Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, Ethics" (SUNY Press, 2023)
    Jan 11 2024
    Tulasi Srinivas' edited volume Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, Ethics (SUNY Press, 2023) brings together historians and ethnographers of South Asia, including leading and emerging scholars, to consider the place and meaning of wonder in such varied joyful, tense, and creative sites and moments as Sufi music performances in Gujarat, Tamil graveyard processions, trans women's charitable practices, Kipling's Orientalist tales, village Kuchipudi dance performances, and Rajasthani healing shrines. Offering a synthetic and scholarly reading of wonder that speaks to the political, aesthetic, and ethical worlds of South Asia, these essays redefine the nature and meaning of wonder and its worlds. Taken together, they provide an invaluable research tool for those in the fields of Asian religion, religion in context, and South Asian religions in particular. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    57 min
  • Jennifer Cazenave, "An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah" (SUNY Press, 2019)
    Jan 8 2024
    Jennifer Cazenave’s An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (SUNY Press, 2019) is a fascinating analysis of the 220 hours of outtakes edited out of the final nine and a half-hour 1985 film with which listeners and readers might be familiar. Well known around the world as one of the greatest documentary films ever made, and certainly one of the most important works/artifacts of Holocaust history and memory, Lanzmann’s eventual finished film emerged from an astonishing 230 hours of interview footage shot in various locations. Commissioned originally by the State of Israel to make a film about the catastrophe, Lanzmann collected these testimonies over a period of several years before beginning the epic task of editing the film. He saved the outtakes as a vital repository of accounts of those who had lived through the Shoah. The footage has since been acquired, preserved, and digitized as an archive by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The chapters of Cazenave’s book explore the film’s conceptualization and production, reframing the final film in terms of all that it left out, to think about what was included in relationship to those stories and scenes excluded for different reasons. Over years from an initial dissertation project to this volume, Cazenave pursued the story of the film and its outtakes through archival research, detective work, and close technical, aesthetic and theoretical consideration. The resulting analysis takes author and reader from consideration of the film/archive in relationship to Holocaust trials (and especially the Eichmann trial of 1961), to issues of gender and the feminine, to the question of rescue and refugees, as well as debates about representation, witnessing, and testimony. The book is a wonderful and complex study that will be of great interest to readers in Holocaust and cinema studies. The magnum opus of a French filmmaker working with a largely French crew, and produced with funding provided in part by the French government, the film also illuminates, in its own ways (including its silences) the difficult French past and politics of Holocaust history and memory. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and empire. She is the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a channel launched in 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h et 4 min
  • M. Sheehy and K-D Mathes, "The Other Emptiness: Rethinking the Zhentong Buddhist Discourse in Tibet" (SUNY Press, 2019)
    Jan 5 2024
    Michael R. Sheehy and Klaus-Dieter Mathes's edited collection The Other Emptiness: Rethinking the Zhentong Buddhist Discourse in Tibet (SUNY Press, 2019) brings together perspectives of leading international Tibetan studies scholars on the subject of zhentong or “other-emptiness.” Defined as the emptiness of everything other than the continuous luminous awareness that is one’s own enlightened nature, this distinctive philosophical and contemplative presentation of emptiness is quite different from rangtong—emptiness that lacks independent existence, which has had a strong influence on the dissemination of Buddhist philosophy in the West. Important topics are addressed, including the history, literature, and philosophy of emptiness that have contributed to zhentong thinking in Tibet from the thirteenth century until today. The contributors examine a wide range of views on zhentong from each of the major orders of Tibetan Buddhism, highlighting the key Tibetan thinkers in the zhentong philosophical tradition. Also discussed are the early formulations of buddhanature, interpretations of cosmic time, polemical debates about emptiness in Tibet, the zhentong view of contemplation, and creative innovations of thought in Tibetan Buddhism. Highly accessible and informative, this book can be used as a scholarly resource as well as a textbook for teaching graduate and undergraduate courses on Buddhist philosophy. Sangseraima Ujeed, ACLS Robert H.N Ho Postdoctoral Fellow in Buddhist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara received her MSt and DPhil degrees in Oriental Studies from the Department of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. Her main research focus is the trans-national aspect of Buddhism, lineage and identity in Tibet and Mongolia in the Early Modern period, with a particular emphasis on the contributions made by ethnically Mongolian monk scholars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h et 6 min