Rutgers University Press Podcast

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Interviews with authors of Rutgers University Press books.

  1. 2d ago

    Bernadette Ludwig, "Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees in America" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

    Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees in America (Rutgers University Press, 2025) is an ethnographic study of the Liberian refugee community in Staten Island, New York, home to the largest per capita concentration of Liberians in the U.S., that sheds light on the racialization of Black refugees and the racism they have experienced at every step of their migration journey. In this pioneering study, sociologist Bernadette Ludwig explores how Liberians have responded to such racist exclusions, noting how members of this community reject the informal refugee label once they are resettled in the United States. Liberian migrants often view the label as a liability since the larger general public, the media, and the U.S. government tend to regard Black refugees as an economic and social burden unworthy of assistance. Indeed, Black refugees’ humanity is often ignored, Ludwig contends, in favor of overemphasizing presumed barbaric violence, endemic wars, cultural backwardness, and diseases. By detailing the lack of aid and support for Black refugees and describing how Liberian refugees in particular have had to overcome various struggles and barriers in coming to the U.S. and while living here, Unwelcome Shores highlights the overarching role of race and anti-Black racism in American society. Dr. Bernadette Ludwig is a Sociologist and the Assistant Dean of the Macricostas School of Arts and Sciences at Western Connecticut State University. She is also an Affiliated Faculty with The New School's Zolberg Institute on Migration & Mobility.  Host: Michael L. Rosino is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Molloy University, studying racial politics, media, and democracy. His most recent book, Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism Inside Grassroots Political Organizing, is now available with the University of North Carolina Press. In this episode, Dr. Ludwig mentioned an opportunity to get involved in asylum and deportation cases. Here is the link for scholars to submit their information or attend trainings to become country conditions experts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  2. Aug 21

    Andrew Fisher, "Nathan Straus: From Macy's Magnate to International Humanitarian" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

    In New York City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centauries, Nathan Straus was famous as a co-owner of the Macy’s and Abraham and Straus department stores. He was also a leading Zionist and briefly, in 1894, a Democratic nominee for mayor of New York. Yet his greatest achievement, Andrew Fisher argues in Nathan Straus: From Macy’s Magnate to International Humanitarian, was his work in public heath—particularly for the pasteurization of milk. Straus, as Fisher shows, worked with serious scientists and used the knack for promotion that he acquired in his business life to promote research and educate the public. Nathan Straus, published by Rutgers University Press, restores to history a man who was prominent in his time but is almost forgotten today. The book illuminates philanthropy, public health, German Jewry in New York, Zionism, and the history of department stores and retailing. Fisher is a historian and the retired founding executive of the Lavelle Fund for the Blind. For thirty-five years he worked for charitable foundations in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  3. Jun 28

    Fred S. Naiden, "Railroaded: A Motorman’s Story of the New York City Subway" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

    Fred S. Naiden, professor emeritus of history of at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is an authority on the ancient world. In the 1980s in New York City, however, he was New York City Transit Authority Employee number 4046. He cleaned subway platforms and restrooms, drove subways and locomotives, and belonged to Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union. All of these experiences inform his book, Railroaded: A Motorman’s Story of the New York City Subway (Rutgers UP, 2026), published by Rutgers University Press. The book covers his work, his life in New York before gentrification, and how the subway system is embedded in the city’s history. Robert W. Snyder, interviewing for the New Books Network and the Gotham Center for New York City History, is professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University. His books include Transit Talk: New York’s Bus and Subway Workers Tell their Stories (New York Transit Museum/Rutgers University, 1997). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  4. May 8

    Sharon Zukin, "Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change" (Rutgers UP, 2014)

    Since its initial publication, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change (Rutgers UP, 2014) has become the classic analysis of the emergence of artists as a force of gentrification and the related rise of "creative city" policies around the world. This 25th anniversary edition, with a new introduction, illustrates how loft living has spread around the world and that artists' districts--trailing the success of SoHo in New York--have become a global tourist attraction. Sharon Zukin reveals the economic shifts and cultural transformations that brought widespread attention to artists as lifestyle models and agents of urban change, and explains their role in attracting investors and developers to the derelict loft districts where they made their home. Prescient and dramatic, Loft Living shows how a declining downtown Manhattan became a popular "scene," how loft apartments became hot commodities for the middle class, and how investors, corporations, and rich elites profited from deindustrializing the city's factory districts and turning them into trendy venues for art galleries, artisanal restaurants, and bars. However, this edition points out that the artists who led the trend are now priced out of the loft market. Even in New York, where the loft living market was born, artists have no legal claim on loft districts, nor do they get any preferential treatment in the harsh real estate market. From the story of SoHo in Lower Manhattan to SoWa in Boston and SoMa in San Francisco, Zukin explains how once-edgy districts are transformed into high-price neighborhoods, and how no city can restrain the juggernaut of rising property values. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  5. Mar 20

    Piergiorgio Di Giminiani et al. eds., "The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

    Over the last thirty years, Latin America has undergone an unprecedented wave of reparations targeting victims of political violence during military regimes, Indigenous and Afro-Latin groups affected by historical processes of dispossession, and citizens suffering from environmental harm. Reparations prompt us to face uncomfortable pasts and in so doing, create conditions for imagination of multiple futures. In representing the experiences and hopes of those affected by political violence in El Salvador and Argentina, environmental harm in Guatemala and Peru, and colonial dispossession in Chile and Bolivia, reparations are built upon conflictive forms of future imagination, translation of harm and new forms of belonging to and beyond the nation state, which reifies as much as challenges state authority over the promises of actual repair. In today’s Latin American political debate, hopes for justice and democracy remain anchored to the question of the kinds of future that can be imagined through and after reparation. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, Helene Risør, and Karine Vanthuyne discuss their edited volume, The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging (Rutgers UP, 2026) Piergiorgio Di Giminiani is an associate professor in anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is the author of Sentient Lands: Indigeneity, Property, and Political Imagination in Neoliberal Chile and co-editor of Theorizing Relations in Indigenous South America. Helene Risør is a teaching associate professor in anthropology and visiting research fellow at Copenhagen University. Professor Risør is also a senior researcher at the Millennium Institute for Research on Violence and Democracy based in Chile. Professor Karine Vanthuyne is professor in Anthropology at the University of Ottawa. Professor Vanthuyne is the author of La presence d’un passé de violences: mémoires et identités autochtones dans le Guatemala postgénocide, as well as co-editor of Power through Testimony: Residential schools in the age of reconciliation in Canada. Shodona Kettle is a PhD candidate at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. Her research explores demands for reparations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Website here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  6. Mar 4

    Jennifer Boum Make, "Decolonial Care: Reimagining Caregiving in the French Caribbean" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

    Decolonial Care: Reimagining Caregiving in the French Caribbean (Rutgers UP, 2025) examines the relationship between the legacies of colonialism and the dynamics of caregiving that have emerged from the French Caribbean. Putting in dialogue postcolonial studies and care studies, this book elucidates how caring and uncaring have been historically shaped by colonialism and shows how media and narratives help develop decolonial approaches to care that sustain human life and livable environments. Guest Jennifer Boum-Maké is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Georgetown University. In addition to her monograph, she has co-edited 2025’s Graphic Narratives of Resistance: Advocating for Representation and Social Justice in French-Language Bandes Dessinées. In addition to many journal articles and contributions to collected volumes, she serves on a number of editorial boards and is one of the founders of Kwazman vwa: New Paths in Caribbean literature, an online series hosting conversations with ultracontemporary Caribbean writers. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript in progress on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  7. Mar 4

    Ofer Idels, "Embodying the Revolution: The Hebrew Experience and the Globalization of Modern Sports in Interwar Palestine" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

    Join Rabbi Marc Katz for a powerful and unexpected conversation with historian Ofer Idels author of Embodying the Revolution: The Hebrew Experience and the Globalization of Modern Sports in Interwar Palestine (Rutgers UP, 2025). This episode dives into a fascinating paradox at the heart of modern Jewish history:Why did Zionism—especially during the era of “muscular Judaism”—remain deeply ambivalent about sports? Drawing on rich archival research and contemporary theory, Idels reveals a surprising story of Mandate Palestine, where athletes rarely became national heroes and sports never fully transformed into symbols of collective pride. This is more than a history of sports—it’s a conversation about selfhood, revolution, ideology, and the compromises embedded in every national dream. If you care about Zionism, Jewish culture, modern identity, or the meaning of revolution, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. Ofer Idels is the Jenny Belzberg Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary, Canada. He is the author of Zionism: Emotions, Language and Experience. Rabbi Marc Katz is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  8. Feb 18

    Darién J. Davis, "'Black Orpheus' and the Globalization of Afro-Brazilian Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

    “Black Orpheus” and the Globalization of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Rutgers UP, 2026) is the first historical study in English to examine the development, production, and reception of the 1958 film Black Orpheus and its legacy in the 1960s and 1970s. It focuses on the making of the film and the trajectories of the major actors and musicians who helped construct an image of Black Brazil and provides an analysis of the globalization of Afro-Brazilian images and music in France and the United States in the wake of the movie’s success. Using archival sources, interviews, and the secondary literature from France, Brazil, and the United States, this book reveals information about the cultural histories of all three countries and gives readers new insight into the trajectories of diverse actors such as Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, and Léa Garcia and performers such as Agostinho dos Santos, Baden Powell, and Maria D’Apparecida. Darién J. Davis is a professor and the chair of Africana studies at Rutgers University–Newark. He is the author of four books, three edited volumes, and more than forty essays and articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Interviews with authors of Rutgers University Press books.

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