All Episodes
Absence and asexuality.
We’ve seen the page that states “this page intentionally left blank” or heard an authority figure declare “nothing to see here, folks”—and yet the so-called blank page...
Translating the near and far worlds
Welcome to worlds where cunning foxes outsmart bears and humans, where people are turned into wolves, where ogres (stállus) terrorize communities until outwitted, wher...
Political solidarity and state power
The thwarted Central American revolutions during the latter half of the twentieth century marked a watershed in what had become a global anti-imperialist movement stri...
Refusing the machine.
The 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 peopl...
Cinematic activism and solidarity politics in the US
For decades, Arab American activists and allies have used film, video, and multimedia to mobilize support for the Palestinian cause in the United States. In Mainstream...
Cybercultural revolution in the 1960s.
In 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 ...
Abolitionist thinking, practical realities, and radical change
Far 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 abol...
Helen Hoover's Place in the Woods
During 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 ...
On gender and sport
At 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 interconne...
Navigating and challenging deep-seated racial injustices in the Midwest.
Movidas are subtle yet strategic actions through which Latina/x artists forge solidarities, mobilize for justice, and reclaim space. In Place-Keepers, Jessica Lopez Ly...
The perilous edge between patriotism and fascism
The work of Maria Janion, one of Eastern Europe’s most profound intellectuals, who witnessed the rise of authoritarian nationalism in Poland, German occupation during ...
Anti-mafia organizing and solidarity movements in Italy
For 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 r...
Retirement special: Publishing leaders look back at decades of transformation and tenacity in the industry.
Douglas Armato, the fifth director in the University of Minnesota Press's 100-year history, will soon retire after 27 years of leadership at the Press—following an alm...
Blindness and blind spots.
“Jovencito, it’s going to be lonely being different and yet strong in this world,” James Francisco Bonilla’s grandmother told him when he was ten. Born with congenital...
Medical technology and bodily authority
As medical advancements continue to shape the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disability and illness, technology is often presented as a path to autonomy. Rebec...
The digitized afterlives of cultural objects.
What is the opposite of “big” data? In a society where households commonly store personal archives of photos, financial records, and other documents, the “little” data...
Indigenous filmmaking and futures
What lives in the spaces between dreams and apocalypse? Two authors discuss their books on Indigenous media: Karrmen Crey, whose Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Ind...
Surrealism and selfhood
In interwar Paris, the encounter between surrealism and the nascent discipline of ethnology led to an intellectual project now known as “ethnographic surrealism.” Joyc...