Andrew McKevitt: Gun Rights and Consumerism

Professor Andrew McKevitt talks about his book, “Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America.” America’s gun culture was not an inevitable outcome of the Second Amendment and Professor McKevitt explains why. Framing America’s obsession with guns as essentially a consumerist market, not unlike another other collectible or commodity, Prof. McKevitt uncovers one potential origin – post-War European military surplus. Professor Andrew McKevitt is the John D. Winters Endowed…

Andrew Lawler: Lord Dunmore's Emancipation Proclamation

Andrew Lawler discusses his new book, “Perfect Frenzy: a Royal Governor, his Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution.” It is the story of the colony of Virginia on the eve of the American Revolution and Lord Dunmore, infamous British villain. But what is fact and what is fiction? Lord Dunmore issued the first Emancipation Proclamation and freed hundreds of slaves, but did he fire bomb Norfolk? What is certain is Dunmore ignited the passions of the Revolutionaries and…

Andres Resendez: Native American Slavery

Andrés Reséndez is a professor of history and author who grew up in Mexico City and currently teaches at the University of California at Davis. Professor Resendez discusses his book, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Prof. Resendez discusses pre-Colonial enslavement among the native people of North America and the Caribbean. How the Spanish invasion changed native societies, altered slavery, and decimated entire populations. Also discussed is how the…

Andrea Ford: Pregnancy, Birth, and Doulas

Andrea Ford discusses her book, Near Birth: Contested Values and the work of Doulas, in which she discusses how pregnancy, birthing, and infant care offer a microcosm of cultural debates. Ford examines how people's birthing decisions and experiences relate to and construct the American ideal of the individual and family in various ways and forms. Andrea Ford is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.

Andra Watkins: Christo-Fascist Code in Project 2025

Andra Watkins discusses her substack, "For Such a Time as This: A Guide to Decode the Country America Has Chosen To Be." Ms. Watkins' life growing up in a Christian Nationalist Southern church indoctrinated her into a worldview and understanding of a coded language based on Christian Biblical Literalism. Since leaving the church, she has used her understanding of this Christian Nationalist code to explain Project 2025, the new Trump Administration's goals, as well as the…

Amanda Moore: Alt-Right, Nazis, and Trump Staffing

Amanda Moore is a freelance journalist covering the far right. We discuss her year undercover in the Alt-Right and her continued work exposing Nazis. Moore's work has centered on far-right influencer Nick Fuentes's misogyny and neo-Nazi rhetoric. Most recently, she's monitoring the J6 insurrectionists and the continued appeal of those who's convictions were commuted and not pardoned. The fans of Fuentes and other far-right groups influence is beginning to be felt as they…

Amanda Frost: Citizenship Stripping

Amanda Frost is the Ann Loeb Bronfman Distinguished Professor of Law and Government at American University in Washington, D.C. Amanda Frost discusses her book, "You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers." Beginning with Reconstruction, American citizenship began a contested and trouble road toward full protection of "birthright citizenship." What it meant to be a citizen varied for immigrant groups depending on racism, economics, and…

Alys Weinbaum: Slavery and Surrogacy

Alys Weinbaum, professor of English at the University of Washington, discusses her book, The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery. Professr Weinbaum examines how the legal and cultural impact of Atlantic slavery defined slave reproduction and enslaved women as “biocapital.” This form of racialized capitalism changed human reproduction from kinship to “breeding.” How this ideology remains four centuries later in the emerging markets for female egg harvesting to the multimillion dollar international…

Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo: Microaggressions

Dr. Skinner-Dorkenoo is an assistant professor at the University of Georgia. Dr. Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo discusses her article, "How Microaggressions Reinforce and Perpetuate Systemic Racism in the United States." She defines what microaggressions are and how they support White superiority. Through subtle and slight processes microaggressions protect and reinforce the "othering" of people of color with environmental exclusions, treating people of color as second class, and…

Alison Skinner-Dorkenoo: The Water We Swim In: An Examination of Systemic Influences on Our Attitudes

This talk will make the case that systemic forms of oppression are maintained and reinforced through subtle patterns of thought and behavior, and present some paths through which those systems can be challenged. Dr. Skinner-Dorkenoo has been an assistant professor at the University of Georgia since the fall of 2019.

Alexis Hoag: Race and the Death Penalty

Alexis Hoag, Practitioner in Residence at Columbia Law School’s Holder Initiative, discusses the systemic racial issues at the heart of our Judicial system. Professor Hoag is an anti-death penalty advocate who recently published, "Valuing Black Lives: A Case for Ending the Death Penalty" and argued before the Ohio Supreme Court advocating for Glen Bates.

Alexia Rauen: When Immigrants Call the Police

Alexia Rauen discusses the article she co-authored, "Experiences of immigrant survivors of violence with law enforcement." She explains how immigrant victims of domestic violence viewed their interactions with responding police officers. Based on interviews with survivors, she found that experiences with police varied widely based on factors such as immigration status, English proficiency, and gender. Alexia Rauen is the Co-Executive Director at Advocates for Immigrant Survivors…

Alexandra Urakova: Gift Giving in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Alexandra Urakova discusses her article, ""I do not want her, I am sure": Commodities, Gifts, and Poisonous Gifts in Uncle Tom's Cabin." Professor Urakova sees gift giving in Uncle Tom's Cabin as a disruption within the sentimental context of the narrative. Topsy and Orphelia, Eva and Tom, and Shelby and St. Clare are all complicated and compromised in the act of gift giving or receiving, especially by what it means to give the gift of an enslaved person.…

Alexandra Natapoff: Misdemeanor System

Alexandra Natapoff, Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is an award-winning legal scholar and criminal justice expert. Professor Alexandra Natapoff discusses her book, Punishment without Crime. How America's Misdemeanor justice system targets the innocent, taxes the poor, and generates revenue for the public and private sector. We discuss why people plead guilty to low level infractions and how that impacts minority and at-risk populations.

Alex Reinert: 8th Amendment Debate

Alex Reinert is the Max Freund Professor Litigation and Advocacy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Prof. Reinert discusses his article "Reconceptualizing the Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, and 'Cruel and Unusual' Punishment." Prof. Reinert talks about "the law of slavery" and how little we have travelled from the 1870s to today when it comes to the understanding of "cruel and unsual" punishment as the standard of imprisonment.

Alec Karakatsanis: Copaganda and the Media

Alec Karakatsanis discusses his book, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate the News. He outlines the concept of Copaganda which is a process of manufacturing fear of the most powerless to push the idea that our fears are only solved by more money for police, prisons, and prosecutions. By looking at news articles, the sources reporters use, and the repetitive language, he points to huge police P.R. Departments and private actors who shape and feed the news. Additionally, how even the…

Aidan Beatty: Sexual Antisemitism

This episode deals with sexual topics and abuse, all trigger warnings apply. Aidan Beatty discusses his article, “The Pornography of Fools: Tracing the History of Sexual Antisemitism.” Professor Beatty looks into historical sexual depictions, emotions and desires developed in the middle ages that continue to work in contemporary far-right antisemitic rhetoric. Aidan Beatty is a Lecturer and Senior Academic Advisor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University.

Ahilan Arulanantham: Immigration Law and Racist Precedent

Ahilan Arulanantham discusses his article, "Reversing Racist Precedent." In the article he examines how racist precedent remains a key feature of our legal system and how racism sits at the very center of US immigration law. Immigration law is originally tainted by two cases at the heart of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Courts could create a new exception in stare decisis doctrine: cases would be denied precedential force if they were motivated by racial animus. How these changes would…

Adam Shatz: Frantz Fanon and Anti-Colonialism

Adam Shatz discuss his book, The Rebel’s Clinic: the Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. Shatz brings to life Fanon as a man shaped by philosophy, psychiatry, and the anti-colonial struggles in Algeria and Africa. While also detailing how his two books, Black Skin, White Masks and Wretched of the Earth, combined Fanon's empathy and anger to produce consistently resonate works of struggle and liberation. Adam Shatz is the US editor of The London Review of Books and a contributor to many…

Adam Malka: Rise of Baltimore Police

Adam Malka is an Associate Professor of U.S. History at the University of Oklahoma. Professor Malka discusses his book "The Men of Mobtown" exploring how the free black population of the antebellum South came to be controlled and policed. We explore the roles and expectations of white citizens and how black freedom came to define criminal behavior.

Aaron Bekemeyer: Thin Blue Line of Police Unions

Aaron Thomas Bekemeyer, Lecturer on History, Harvard University. Professor Aaron Bekemeyer discusses the complicated history of police unionization. How police balanced their role as union busters and political enforcers with their desire for higher wages and retirement/pensions led to contradictions in messaging. After both World Wars, American society changed in various ways and policing took on new meanings, in response to reformist challenges to political machine corruption and later the…