In Conversation: An OUP Podcast

Never have so many possessed the means to be so lethal. The diffusion of modern technology (robotics, cyber weapons, 3-D printing, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence) to ordinary people has given them access to weapons of mass violence previously monopolized by the state. In recent years, states have attempted to stem the flow of such weapons to individuals and non-state groups, but their efforts are failing.In Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists (Oxford University Press, 2019), Audrey Kurth Cronin... Explains a fundamental shift in patterns of innovation for lethal technologies, and what it means; Looks at individuals and private groups, not states, as the most significant trend redefining the future; Presents contemporary case studies and discussion of paradigm-shifting technology from the late 19th century and mid-20th century; Combines history, science and technology, political science, security and terrorism studies, with a deep understanding of US and international security policy; Considers why certain lethal technologies spread, which ones to focus on, and how individuals and private groups might adapt the latest off-the-shelf technologies for malevolent ends; and Recommends a broad array of tactics and policies to contain and combat violent rogue actors worldwide. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch.

When asked what democracy is, many of us instantly think of elections, and thus voting. Although we tend to see voting as central to democracy, we also think that voting is optional – a commendable activity that a citizen might choose to do, but one that can be omitted blamelessly. What’s more, political theorists and philosophers tend to regard voting as irrational, reckless, or worse. Some have even suggested that low voter turnout is a signal of the health of a society.In The Duty to Vote (Oxford University Press, 2019), Julia Maskivker argues that voting is an obligation rooted in a Samaritan duty.

What was the role of love and courtship in eighteenth-century English culture? In her new book, The Game of Love in Georgian England: Courtship, Emotions, and Material Culture (Oxford University Press, 2019), Sally Holloway uses innovative methods to explore the history of romantic love in the long eighteenth century. Examining sixty courtships from across England, she argues that romantic love was an essential part of the eighteenth-century life cycle. In doing so, Holloway foregrounds the language of love, love letters, material objects like gifts and love tokens, and breach of promise cases to offer new insights into this important stage in Georgian women’s and men’s lives. As she reveals, experiences of love, courtship, betrothal, and romantic breakdown were central elements of the eighteenth-century emotional landscape, across a range of classes and locations.Dr. Sally Holloway is the Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in History & History of Art in the School of History, Philosophy and Culture at Oxford Brookes University.Jess Clark is an Associate Professor of History at Brock University (St. Catharines, Ontario). Her book, The Business of Beauty: Gender and the Body in Modern London, will be published by Bloomsbury in April 2020.

A funny thing happened to historian Michael Vann* on the way to his PhD thesis. While he was doing his research on French colonialism and the urbanist project in Hanoi, he came across an intriguing dossier: “Destruction of animals in the city”. The documents he found started him on a research path that led to a section of his dissertation, then an article that gained a wide academic and non-academic readership, and now The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford UP, 2018). But this isn’t your typical historical monograph. One of the latest volumes in Oxford University Press’s Graphic History Series, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt (with illustrations by Liz Clarke), explores the history of modernization, urbanization, and the spread of epidemic disease in the era of “New Imperialism” in an exciting and highly engaging format.The remaking of Hanoi as a capital of French empire from the end of the nineteenth century had unintended consequences. In the state-of-the-art sewers of the French/white areas of the city, rats found the perfect home. Then came the Third plague pandemic, the disease that travelled with rats and moved from one site to another around the globe…on railroads, ships, the growing networks of trade and empire. The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt mobilizes years of research about this episode in the city’s history, illustrating (literally!) the inherent contradictions of imperialism, and the complexities of domination and resistance in a colonial context. Framed as an undergraduate lecture that features the author as a character throughout the narrative, the book is set up with teaching in mind. In addition to the fascinating story of the rat hunt itself (and all the twists and turns involved), the volume includes a rich selection of primary sources and a series of contextual essays that will allow students to explore this history in a range of productive ways. An accessible book that is at once serious and fun, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt was such a pleasure to read and to talk about. I hope listeners will enjoy my conversation with Mike as much as I did!*Mike is also a host on New Books in History! Be sure to check out his interviews here on the network.Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. She is the author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France Between the Wars (2009). Her current research focuses on the history of French nuclear weapons and testing since 1945. Her most recent article, '"No Hiroshima in Africa": The Algerian War and the Question of French Nuclear Tests in the Sahara' appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of History of the Present. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca).

What happened when Americans and Soviets fought alongside one another against Hitler? How did relations at Poltava airbase reveal cracks in the Grand Alliance? Serhii Plokhy tells the story of personal relationships and high geopolitics in his new book Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen behind the Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance (Oxford University Press, 2019). Using a wealth of memoirs and recently declassified secret police files, Plokhy captures the intimate detail of a culture clash that chilled relations before Nazism was even defeated.Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo S. Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History and Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.Ryan Stackhouse is a historian of Europe specializing in modern Germany and political policing under dictatorship. His book exploring Gestapo enforcement practices toward different social groups is nearing completion under the working title Enemies of the People. He also cohosts the Third Reich History Podcast and can be reached at john.ryan.stackhouse@gmail.com or @Staxomatix.

Today I talked to S. Deborah Kang about her book The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border, 1917-1954, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. The INS on the Line explores the history behind Immigration and Naturalization Service throughout the 20th Century, interrogating how this agency was critical to the creation and re-creation of immigration law during this time period. Kang shows that the INS did not just think of itself as a law enforcement agency, but through numerous legal innovations and interpretations, embraced an identity as a lawmaking body responsible for balancing the money competing interests in local, regional, and national geographies.S. Deborah Kang is an Associate Professor of history at California State University San Marcos. She is currently studing the relationship between law and society on both the United States’ southern and northern borders.Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.

In the United States in particular, there is almost no social space today, whether that’s Thanksgiving dinner or going shopping, that has not become saturated with political meaning. In Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in Its Place (Oxford University Press, 2019), Robert Talisse argues that contrary to what many democratic theorists have argued, democracy is something we can do too much of – and that it is in fact being overdone. Talisse, who is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, notes that features of everyday life are overwhelmingly transformed into expressions of political identity, and argues that this transformation undermines democracy itself, since it undermines our capacity for civic friendship, or the capacity to see our political rivals as our equals. His book is a provocative contribution to discussion among political theorists about the problems facing contemporary democracy; from a practical standpoint, he also suggests that a way to counter this situation is to consciously seek out social interactions where politics is off the table.

Carlton F. W. Larson is the author of The Trials of Allegiance: Treason, Juries, and the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2019). The Trials of Allegiance looks at the law of treason during the American Revolution, showing just how central treason is to understanding the course of the Revolution. Looking at Pennsylvania, Professor Larson provides readers with a comprehensive study of treason prosecutions brought by Americans against non-Patriots or non-Rebels, depending on who you asked of course. Larson uses these trials and their aftermaths to show how treason helped shape America’s national identity during the Revolution.Carlton F. W. Larson is a Professor of Law at the University of California – Davis School of Law. Larson studies American constitutional law and Anglo-American legal history.Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.

Jonathan Rosa's new book Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines the emergence of linguistic and ethnoracial categories in the context of Latinidad. The book draws from more than twenty-four months of ethnographic and sociolinguistic fieldwork in a Chicago public school, whose student body is more than 90% Mexican and Puerto Rican, to analyze the racialization of language and its relationship to issues of power and national identity. It focuses specifically on youth socialization to U.S. Latinidad as a contemporary site of political anxiety, raciolinguistic transformation, and urban inequity.Rosa's account studies the fashioning of Latinidad in Chicago's highly segregated Near Northwest Side; he links public discourse concerning the rising prominence of U.S. Latinidad to the institutional management and experience of raciolinguistic identities there. Anxieties surrounding Latinx identities push administrators to transform "at risk" Mexican and Puerto Rican students into "young Latino professionals." This institutional effort, which requires students to learn to be and, importantly, sound like themselves in highly studied ways, reveals administrators' attempts to navigate a precarious urban terrain in a city grappling with some of the nation's highest youth homicide, dropout, and teen pregnancy rates. Rosa explores the ingenuity of his research participants' responses to these forms of marginalization through the contestation of political, ethnoracial, and linguistic borders.Carrie Gillon and Megan Figueroa are the hosts of the terrific The Vocal Fries, a podcast about language and linguistic discrimination. You can find it on Apple Podcasts here. 

According to an intuitive view, lives are meaningful when they manifest a directedness or instantiate a project such that the disparate events and endeavors “add up to” a life.  John Stuart Mill’s life certainly was devoted to a project in that sense.  Yet Mill’s life was in many respects unsatisfying – riven with anxiety and trauma.  What does Mill’s life teach us about meaningful lives?In John Stuart Mill and the Meaning of Life (Oxford University Press 2019), Elijah Millgram weaves intellectual biography together with philosophical analysis in the service of a distinctive style of moral philosophizing.