

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
New Books Network
Interviews with Oxford University Press authors about their books
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jul 17, 2020 • 1h 2min
Leslie Dorrough Smith, "Compromising Positions: Sex Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Sex scandals are ubiquitous in American politics. In Compromising Positions: Sex Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2019), Leslie Dorrough Smith examines the dynamics of political sex scandals and the rhetorical strategies employed by politicians that enable them to successfully withstand a public sex scandal.Through an examination of some of the most sensational sex scandals throughout the last several decades, Leslie Dorrough Smith demonstrates that sex scandals are about much more than sex.Leslie Dorrough Smith is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and the Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Avila University.Lindsey Jackson is a PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Jul 16, 2020 • 54min
Brian F. Harrison, "A Change is Gonna Come: How to Have Effective Political Conversations in a Divided America" (Oxford UP, 2020)
The United States takes pride in its democratic model and the idea that citizens deliberate in a process to form political opinions. However, in recent years, division and partisanship have increased while deliberation and the actual discussion of competing ideas have decreased. More and more, citizens are siloed, interacting only with those with whom they agree, and there is more negative animus directed at the opposition. In his new book, A Change is Gonna Come: How to Have Effective Political Conversations in a Divided America (Oxford University Press, 2020), Political Scientist Brian F. Harrison critiques many of the current methods of communicating and explores the growing divide within political discourse. He demonstrates how, in our contemporary environment, political debate includes more name-calling and far less of a desire to understand political opponents. But hope is not lost. Looking at recent history, Harrison argues that conversations about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights successfully changed public opinion in a civil manner and did so rather quickly. Drawing on this example, Harrison proposes a model for how the citizens in the United States can overcome increased partisanship and dissent in favor of more civil and productive conversation. A Change is Gonna Come contextualizes both the advice and suggestions provided in the book by tracing out a great deal of the literature about political psychology and identity politics, since Harrison argues that part of the difficulty is the way that partisanship has become more of an identity marker for many voters.Harrison offers the discourse about LGBTQ+ rights as a model for how engagement should occur. This is also an area of research that Harrison has previously explored in other works, specifically his co-authored book with Melissa Michelson, Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Changes Attitudes about LGBT Rights. He notes that change in public opinion typically takes a long time. But in the last 15 years alone, public opinion around LGBTQ+ rights has significantly shifted. Harrison contends that change in public opinion regarding LGBTQ+ rights was supported by people of differing backgrounds engaging in uncomfortable conversations about the issue. He extrapolates that by talking to people with whom we disagree, we develop a dialogue which helps people on all sides of the issue to understand other viewpoints. In A Change is Gonna Come, Harrison outlines how to approach these conversations, including how to avoid a combative approach and how to engage, respectfully, across political and cultural divides. Combining social psychology, communication studies, and political science, Harrison concludes that if citizens in the United States wants to regain a sense of civility in politics, they should follow the model presented by LGBTQ+ discussions and encourage people to have difficult conversations across policy and partisan lines.Adam Liebell-McLean assisted with this podcast.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

Jul 16, 2020 • 1h 3min
Luke Messac, "No More to Spend: Neglect and the Construction of Scarcity in Malawi's History of Health Care" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Dismal spending on government health services is often considered a necessary consequence of a low per-capita GDP, but are poor patients in poor countries really fated to be denied the fruits of modern medicine?In many countries, officials speak of proper health care as a luxury, and convincing politicians to ensure citizens have access to quality health services is a constant struggle. Yet, in many of the poorest nations, health care has long received a tiny share of public spending.Colonial and postcolonial governments alike have used political, rhetorical, and even martial campaigns to rebuff demands by patients and health professionals for improved medical provision, even when more funds were available.No More to Spend: Neglect and the Construction of Scarcity in Malawi's History of Health Care (Oxford University Press, 2020) challenges the inevitability of inadequate social services in twentieth-century Africa, focusing on the political history of Malawi.Using the stories of doctors, patients, and political leaders, Luke Messac demonstrates how both colonial and postcolonial administrations in this nation used claims of scarcity to justify the poor state of health care. During periods of burgeoning global discourse on welfare and social protection, forestalling improvements in health care required varied forms of rationalization and denial.Calls for better medical care compelled governments, like that of Malawi, to either increase public health spending or offer reasons for their inaction. Because medical care is still sparse in many regions in Africa, the recurring tactics for prolonged neglect have important implications for global health today.Luke Messac is a resident in emergency medicine at Brown University. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. (History and the Sociology of Science) from the University of Pennsylvania.Bekeh Utietiang Ukelina is an Assistant Professor of History at SUNY, Cortland. His research examines the ideologies and practices of development in Africa, south of the Sahara. He is the author of The Second Colonial Occupation: Development Planning, Agriculture, and the Legacies of British Rule in Nigeria. For more NBN interviews, follow him on Twitter @bekeh or head to bekeh.com.

Jul 14, 2020 • 1h 16min
David L. Haberman, “Loving Stones: Making the Impossible Possible in the Worship of Mount Govardhan” (Oxford UP, 2020)
Loving Stones: Making the Impossible Possible in the Worship of Mount Govardhan (Oxford University Press) explores the worship world of Mount Govardhan: located in the Braj region of India, the mountain is considered an embodied form of the Hindu deity Krishna.Above and beyond providing insight into the fascinating religious practices surrounding worship of Mount Govardhan, Haberman probes the paradox of an infinite god embodied in finite form, In doing so, he offers critical consideration of the pejorative concept of idolatry in the study of religions, in particular its problematic use to when applied to Hindu religiosity.David L. Haberman is Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University.For information about your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see https://www.rajbalkaran.com/scholarship

Jul 14, 2020 • 53min
Fay Bound Alberti, "A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Before the global pandemic of Covid-19 arrived, public health experts in the U.S. and U.K. were warning of the epidemic of loneliness.Loneliness steals more years of life than obesity. Loneliness is as much of a risk as smoking. Loneliness shortens a lifespan as much as poverty. It is associated with addiction, depression, anxiety, paranoia, and even suicide. And more and more of us report feeling lonely.Nevertheless, despite our 21st-century fears of an epidemic of loneliness, we know very little about it clinically, or historically. So Fay Bound Alberti’s new book, A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion (Oxford University Press, 2019) has appeared at just the right time.Alberti offers a radically new interpretation of loneliness as an emotional language and experience. Using letters and diaries, philosophical tracts, political discussions, and medical literature from the eighteenth century to the present, historian of the emotions Fay Bound Alberti argues that loneliness is not an ahistorical, universal phenomenon. It is, in fact, a modern emotion: before 1800, its language did not exist. And where loneliness is identified, it is not always bad, but a complex emotional state that differs according to class, gender, ethnicity and experience.Looking at informative case studies such as Sylvia Plath, Queen Victoria, and Virginia Woolf, A Biography of Loneliness charts the emergence of loneliness as a modern and embodied emotional state.Dr Fay Bound Alberti is a Reader in History and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of York.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com or tweet @embracingwisdom.

Jul 9, 2020 • 1h 25min
Francine Hirsch, "Soviet Judgement at Nuremberg" (Oxford UP, 2020)
How did an authoritarian regime help lay the cornerstones of human rights and international law? Soviet Judgement at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal (Oxford University Press, 2020) argues that Anglo-American dominated histories capture the moment while missing the story.Drawing upon secret archives open for a few brief years during Russia’s liberalization, Francine Hirsch takes readers behind the scenes to private parties and late-night deliberations where the Nuremberg Principles took shape. A vital corrective told through the messy and all too human negotiations behind a trial that changed everything and almost never happened.Francine Hirsch is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first book Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Cornell UP, 2005) received the Herbert Baxter Adams, Wayne S. Vucinich, and Council for European Studies book prizes. She specializes in Russian and Soviet History, Modern European History, Comparative Empires, Russian-American Engagement, and the History of Human Rights.Ryan Stackhouse is a historian of Europe specializing in modern Germany and political policing under dictatorship. His forthcoming book Enemies of the People: Hitler’s Critics and the Gestapo explores enforcement practices toward different social groups under Nazism. He also cohosts the Third Reich History Podcast and can be reached at john.ryan.stackhouse@gmail.com or @Staxomatix.

Jul 9, 2020 • 1h 4min
Luca Scholz, "Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Today we speak with Luca Scholz, a Lecturer in Digital Humanities at the University of Manchester. Dr. Scholz has varied interests: wide-ranging data analysis, the collection of that data, broad trends over space and time, all of which intersect in the topic of today’s talk, his first monograph, Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire (Oxford University Press).The book draws on sources discovered in twenty archives, from newly unearthed drawings to first-hand accounts by peasants, princes, and prisoners. Scholz's maps shift the focus from the border to the thoroughfare to show that controls of moving goods and people were rarely concentrated at borders before the mid-eighteenth century.Uncovering a forgotten chapter in the history of free movement, the author presents a new look at the unstable relationship of political authority and human mobility in the heartlands of old-regime Europe. We delve deeply into the issues under discussion, particularly the conceptions of borders and free movements. We hope you enjoy our conversation.

Jul 8, 2020 • 57min
Robert Gerwarth, "November 1918: The German Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Was Weimar doomed from the outset?In November 1918: The German Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2020), Robert Gerwarth argues that this is the wrong question to ask. Forget 1929 and 1933, the collapse of Imperial Germany began as a velvet revolution where optimism was as common as pessimism. A masterful synthesis told through diaries and memories, Gerwarth reminds us that contemporaries live events before we have them act out history.Robert Gerwarth is Professor of Modern History at UCD and Director of the Centre for War Studies. He is the author of The Bismarck Myth (Oxford UP, 2005) and a biography of Reinhard Heydrich (Yale UP, 2011). His third monograph, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End was published by Penguin (UK) and FSG (US) in the autumn of 2016.Ryan Stackhouse is a historian of Europe specializing in modern Germany and political policing under dictatorship. His forthcoming book Enemies of the People: Hitler’s Critics and the Gestapo explores enforcement practices toward different social groups under Nazism. He also cohosts the Third Reich History Podcast and can be reached at john.ryan.stackhouse@gmail.com or @Staxomatix.

Jul 6, 2020 • 59min
S. Moskalenko and C. McCauley, "Radicalization to Terrorism: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Terrorism and radicalization came to the forefront of news and politics in the US after the unforgettable attacks of September 11th, 2001. When George W. Bush famously asked "Why do they hate us?," the President echoed the confusion, anger and fear felt by millions of Americans, while also creating a politicized discourse that has come to characterize and obscure discussions of both phenomena in the media.Since then the American public has lived through a number of domestic attacks and threats, and watched international terrorist attacks from afar on television sets and computer screens. The anxiety and misinformation surrounding terrorism and radicalization are perhaps best detected in questions that have continued to recur in the last decade: "Are terrorists crazy?"; "Is there a profile of individuals likely to become terrorists?"; "Is it possible to prevent radicalization to terrorism?" Fortunately, in the two decades since 9/11, a significant body of research has emerged that can help provide definitive answers.In Radicalization to Terrorism: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2020), Sophia Moskalenko and Clark McCauley propose twelve mechanisms that can move individuals, groups, and mass publics from political indifference to sympathy and support for terrorist violence. Radicalization to Terrorism: What Everyone Needs to Know synthesizes original and existing research to answer the questions raised after each new attack, including those committed by radicalized Americans. It offers a rigorously informed overview of the insight that will enable readers to see beyond the relentless news cycle to understand where terrorism comes from and how best to respond to it.Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch.

Jul 6, 2020 • 50min
Peter J. Boettke, "Public Governance and the Classical-Liberal Perspective" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Today I spoke with Professor Peter J. Boettke, co-author of Public Governance and the Classical-Liberal Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2019) with Paul Dragos Aligica and Vlad Tarko.Dr Boettke is University Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, at George Mason University, USA.In our conversation we defined the disciplines of Public Choice and Public Administration and we named the key actors of a very long intellectual debate. We discussed the practical relevance (for policymakers and taxpayers) of this debate in economics and we also addressed contemporary issues such as the management of the Covid-19 crisis and the institutional architecture of police forces in the USA.The book is divided into three parts: Part I: A Distinctive Perspective on Governance: The Building Blocks; Part II: Public Choice and Public Administration: The Confluence; Part III: Framing the Applied Level: Themes, Issue Areas, and Cases.The book challenges some of the most ingrained views about an important intellectual tradition in political and administrative sciences thinking. It aims to demonstrate that there are alternative ways of defending democracy and liberal open societies in a theoretically sophisticated and feasible way.Building on the political economy principles underpinning the works of diverse authors such as Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan and Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, this book challenges the technocratic-epistocratic perspective in which social goals are defined by an aggregated social function and experts simply provide the means to attain them.The authors argue that individualism, freedom of choice, and freedom of association have deep implications on how we design, manage and assess our public governance arrangements. The book examines the knowledge and incentive problems associated with bureaucratic public administration while contrasting it with democratic governance.This is a sophisticated, timely and important contribution that many will find interesting: economists, political scientists and policymakers.Andrea Bernardi is Senior Lecturer in Employment and Organization Studies at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. He holds a doctorate in Organization Theory from the University of Milan, Bicocca. He has held teaching and research positions in Italy, China and the UK. Among his research interests are the use of history in management studies, the co-operative sector, and Chinese co-operatives. His latest project is looking at health care in China. He is the co-convener of the EAEPE’s permanent track on Co-operative economy and collective ownership.