Just out: Massimiliano Tomba on "outdated" concepts that resurface in politically radical ways. My daughter recently asked me why I'm interested in things from the past if they can't change. My answer was that they do, they resurface and change the present. This book suggests how that might happen.

Just out: Basit Iqbal's accout of Islamic humanitarian organizations is a superb ethnography of aid in the wake of the Syrian civil war. But it's more than that too: a philosophically rich account of how Islamic theology might inflect the questions an ethnographer can ask.

Just out: Chunjie Zhang explores an exchange of philosophical traditions in the early twentieth century in which German philosophers turned to Chinese thought and Chinese philosophers turned to German traditions -- and the entwined conceptiosn of modernity that these encounters produced.

Catalog time!

Just out: May Hawas and Bruce Robbins have put together a terrific, and admirably international collection, called "Teaching Politically." Nobody needs me to say how important a topic this is at the moment.

Just out: Rose Casey's sparkling account of the ways postcolonial literature has generated conceptual capacities for thinking in fresh ways about property law. A really fine account of the interplay between aesthetics and politics, especially beyond North American and European legal traditions.

Just out: Lauren Shizuko Stone on the queerness of German children's literature -- and how it imagines temporality in ways that challenge the anglophone discourse on that question. I hope some non-Germanists will take this up too - it's a fascinating account.

Just out: a final (alas) book by the brilliant anthropologist Rafael Sanchez that's quite a bit more than what the subtitle calls a memoir. It's a very personal acount of coming to terms with the ugliness of patriarchy, as well as the possibility of politics he found in the plazas of Venezuela.

Another book I didn't sponsor myself but wish I had: Andrea Moore on new music and memorialization. She's interested both in the question of who is, as Butler would say, grievable, as well as in how music thinks memory in ways that language -- or even the conventional languages of music -- don't.

Those who know Roz Morris as a brilliant scholar whose work moves between anthropology, philosophy, and literary studies, may know that she's also a superb poet. This book (which I didn't sponsor myself) shows the range of her talents.

Glad to be at SCMS for the first time. Come say hi if you’re here.

A fabulous entry in our new film series. For Jules O'Dwyer, the hotel is not just a setting but bound up with the techniques of cinema itself in its orchestration of space, its practices of labor, and its deleneation of the public and the private. Fun and fascinating.

Just out: a reissue of a classic, with a fine new preface. Butler's the best.

Elena Gorfinkel and JD Rhodes offer a theory of the film prop, from Sirk's bric-a-brac, to sexploitation's living rooms, to Risky Business's crystal egg, and beyond. This is the first in a new series of short books for cinephiles, examining a single object, technique, or motif across film history.

Just out: Isabelle Boni-Claverie's searing account of anti-Black racism in France -- and also, more briefly, the United States. Boni-Claverie's documentary film on the topic is also highly recommended.

Just out: Jan Overwijk tackles cybernetic rationalism within capitalism. A fine way of thinking two distinct traditions -- systems theory and critical theory -- together, while expanding the horizons of both. With thanks to Bruce Clarke and Henry Sussman for sponsoring the book in Meaning Systems.

Amid the horrors, books. Liesl Yamaguchi takes on synesthesia between the way artists and scientists formulated it (which wasn't always so distinct as it is now). A wonderful addition to our Verbal Arts series -- thanks to Haun Saussy and Lazar Fleishman for sponsoring it there.

Just out: a terrific edited collection that draws on the supposedly contradictory insights of Marxism and deconstruction to reinvent the opposition between translation and universality. Gavin Arnall, Katie Chenoweth, and some terrific contributors expand the possibilities of politics.

Come say hello at MLA!

Fordham is celebrating four MLA prizes this year! Congratulations to Catherine Brown, Kate Heslop, Anna Ziajka Stanton, and Giulia Ricco.

Just out: Dominic Pettman reminds us that, before the hivemind, people would tell their troubles to the local hive. Just as lockdown began Pettman started talking to bees, and recording it in a journal. Those who know his writing will know what a funny, perceptive, and eloquent book this is.

Some items to look forward to next spring and summer.

Just out: Timothy Billings has a beautiful way to introduce classical Chinese poetry: through twenty-nine translations of the same poem by Li Bai. Despite the lightness of tone (it's often very funny), Billings commands a very strong Sinological background. Terrific book.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Just out: Chris Breu's excellent book (sponsored by a colleague) on nonbinary embodiment. Breu wants to recover the importance of sex for thinking trans and nonbinary identities. Not sex as a biological given, of course, but as a materiality that needs to be both taken seriously and queered.

I'm sorry not to be at AAA this year (I have a conflict this week). Next year, I'll be back in person, but for now, drop by the Ingram table for our recent books, and check out our virtual exhibit.

I was really hoping we wouldn't find ourselves in repromoting @bonniehonig.bsky.social's superb book. It would, of course, have remained relevant even if last week had gone better than it did. But now it's utterly essential.