Teaching politically

Culture is inextricable from politics. This includes the politics of who we are, as teachers, intellectuals, writers, cultural workers, and students, and what we want to bring to and take from the site of instruction. It also includes the politics of who we want to be, as citizens, professionals,...

Technicians of human dignity

Tracks the development of the concept of human dignity in post-war ethics and politics, focusing on the Vatican, the United Nations, and U.S. Federal Bioethics.

Technologies of critique

Technologies of Critique elaborates a critical practice that eludes critique’s capture by institutional and market logics. Building on Chile’s history of dissident art and its entangling of politics and aesthetics, Thayer engages continental philosophical traditions, to help pinpoint the technolo...

Temporal privilege

Jill Stauffer identifies the way certain experiences of time are valued over others as “temporal privilege” and shows how this concept helps illuminate injustices that are often hidden in plain sight.

Ten days that shook the world

A new edition of John Reed’s classic eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution, 100 years since its first publication.

Territories in resistance

A thoughtful examination of social relations in Latin America, from one of the region's foremost political analysts.

The activist humanist

An argument that humanists have the tools—and the responsibility—to mobilize political power to tackle climate changeAs climate catastrophes intensify, why do literary and cultural studies scholars so often remain committed to the separation of aesthetic study from the nitty-gritty of political c...

The aesthetic cold war

How decolonization and the cold war influenced literature from Africa, Asia, and the CaribbeanHow did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In The Aesthetic Cold War, Peter Kalliney explores the various ways that rival states used cultural diplomacy and...

The age of choice

Finalist for the Cundill History PrizeA New York Times Notable Book of the YearA sweeping history of the rise of personal choice in the modern world and how it became equated with freedomChoice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what p...

The american mirage

How the entertainment narrative of upward mobility distorts the harsh economic realities in AmericaIn an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, many still view the ...

The antagonistic principle

In this ground-breaking contribution to political theory, Modenesi re-establishes the centrality of Marxism in conceptualizing political action.

The antiegalitarian mutation

A provocative plan to protect open citizenship and equal participation in politics.

The arab uprisings explained

The Arab Uprisings Explained offers a fresh rethinking of established theories and presents a new framework through which scholars and general readers can better grasp the fast-developing events remaking the region

The banality of heidegger

Jean-Luc Nancy provides an analysis of the anti-Semitic aspects of Heidegger’s recently published Black Notebooks. Nancy refers to a philosophical or “historial” anti-Semitism marked, nonetheless, by the “banality” of ordinary anti-Semitism pervading Europe. Heidegger’s thought is placed in the b...

The beginning of politics

How the book of Samuel offers a timeless meditation on the dilemmas of statecraftThe book of Samuel is universally acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of biblical literature. Yet the book’s anonymous author was more than an inspired storyteller. The author was also an uncannily astute...

The birth of politics

A lively and accessible introduction to the Greek and Roman origins of our political ideasIn The Birth of Politics, Melissa Lane introduces the reader to the foundations of Western political thought, from the Greeks, who invented democracy, to the Romans, who created a republic and then transform...

The black circle

Jeff Love reinterprets Alexandre Kojève’s works, showing him to be a provocative thinker who challenged modernity's valuation of self-interest. Joining intellectual history, close textual analysis, and philosophy, The Black Circle reveals Kojève’s thought as a profound critique of capitalist indi...

The care of the self and the care of the other

This book explores the ways several twentieth-century thinkers—Pierre Hadot, Georges Friedmann, Michel Foucault, Martin Luther King Jr., and Audre Lorde—can help us relate the ethical transformation of the self and the political transformation of the world.

The civic bargain

A powerful case for democracy and how it can adapt and survive—if we want it toIs democracy in trouble, perhaps even dying? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country’s system of governance is being “tested” or is “under attack.” But is the future of democracy n...

The civil condition in world politics

Bringing together an international team of contributors, this volume draws on international political theory and intellectual history to rethink the problem of a pluralistic world order. Inspired by the work of international political theorist Nicholas Rengger, the book focuses on three main are...

The claims of culture

How can liberal democracy best be realized in a world fraught with conflicting new forms of identity politics and intensifying conflicts over culture? This book brings unparalleled clarity to the contemporary debate over this question. Maintaining that cultures are themselves torn by conflicts ab...

The clash of globalizations

This work addresses the politics of globalization and the rise of anti-capitalist movements.

The clash of ideas in world politics

Some blame the violence and unrest in the Muslim world on Islam itself, arguing that the religion and its history is inherently bloody. Others blame the United States, arguing that American attempts to spread democracy by force have destabilized the region, and that these efforts are somehow radi...

The craft of international history

This is a practical guide to the historical study of international politics. The focus is on the nuts and bolts of historical research--that is, on how to use original sources, analyze and interpret historical works, and actually write a work of history. Two appendixes provide sources sure to be ...

The currency of politics

Money in the history of political thought, from ancient Greece to the Great Inflation of the 1970sIn the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, critical attention has shifted from the economy to the most fundamental feature of all market economies—money. Yet despite the centrality of political strugg...

The darkened light of faith

A powerful new account of what a group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American activists, intellectuals, and artists can teach us about democracyCould the African American political tradition save American democracy? African Americans have had every reason to reject America’s democr...

The decline and rise of democracy

"One of the most important books on political regimes written in a generation."—Steven Levitsky, New York Times–bestselling author of How Democracies DieA new understanding of how and why early democracy took hold, how modern democracy evolved, and what this history teaches us about the futureHis...

The demon in democracy

The development dilemma

Reassessing the developing world through the lens of Europe's pastToday’s developing nations emerged from the rubble of the Second World War. Only a handful of these countries have subsequently attained a level of prosperity and security comparable to that of the advanced industrial world. The im...

The dialectic is in the sea

Collected writings by one of the most influential Black Brazilian intellectuals of the twentieth centuryBeatriz Nascimento (1942–1995) was a poet, historian, artist, and political leader in Brazil’s Black movement, an innovative and creative thinker whose work offers a radical reimagining of gend...

The dialectic of position and maneuver

An illuminating examination of the role that the metaphors ‘war of position’ and ‘war of maneuver’ play in Gramsci’s theory.

The disavowed community

Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community—a book outlining a critical response to Jean-Luc Nancy’s early proposal for thinking an “inoperative community”—The Disavowed Community offers a close reading of Blanchot’s text.

The disclosure of politics

María Pía Lara explores the ambiguity of secularization and the theoretical potential of a structural break between politics and religion.

The discourse of voluntary servitude

La Boétie maps how power metastasizes through favors, flattery, and fear.

The disraeli myth

Tracing the multifaceted construction and deployment of the Disraeli myth and its legacy in Conservative (and conservative) politicsDuring his lifetime, Benjamin Disraeli, the late-Victorian Conservative Prime Minister (and popular novelist), was often branded as unprincipled and opportunistic—cl...

The ecocentrists

Keith Mako Woodhouse offers a nuanced history of radical environmentalism in the late-twentieth-century United States. Focusing especially on the group Earth First!, The Ecocentrists explores how it challenged civilization but glossed over the ways economic inequality and social difference define...

The ends of resistance

Alix Olson and Alex Zamalin offer a clear-eyed critical account of how neoliberalism has redefined resistance to thwart social movements and consolidate power.

The environmental republic

A bold new conception of the republic for a planet in crisisRepublicanism is arguably the most powerful political idea in history, an extraordinary feat of human imagination that balances individual liberty with collective responsibility. The Environmental Republic reclaims this idea as the path ...

The fall of republics

What caused the world’s great republics to fall—and what their fate reveals about the dangers facing modern democracies todayIn this timely book, distinguished historian Thomas Madden explores the people, events, and factors that led to the collapse of some of the world’s most enduring republics—...