What role have historians, and the discipline of history itself, played in how historical events unfold? Priya Satia contends that historians were key architects of British imperialism, that history enabled empire in fundamental ways. She also contests the notion that history unfolds in a linear and progressive fashion, and discusses the work and impact of the working-class historian E. P. Thompson. (Encore presentation.) Priya Satia, Time’s Monster: How History Makes History Belknap Press, 2023 (paper) The post History’s Complicity in Empire appeared first on KPFA.

Americans as a population have an unusually large appetite for psychoactive drugs, whether legal or illegal. And American history has been marked by periodic moral panics over drug use and normalization or legalization, as we’re experiencing right now. Why is that? What is it about US society that makes drug use simultaneously so appealing and reviled? Writer and scholar Benjamin Fong weighs in. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Benjamin Yen-Yi Fong, Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge Verso, 2023 The post America’s Drug Binge appeared first on KPFA.

What accounts for worker injuries and fatalities in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota? Should they be viewed as localized phenomena, or are larger socioeconomic processes at work? In his effort to explain oil-boom representations and calamities, Bruce Braun considers and extends Lauren Berlant’s analysis of worker precarity, “crisis ordinariness,” and “slow death.” (Encore presentation.) Braun and Thomas, eds., Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil University of Minnesota Press, 2023 The post Oil & Capital appeared first on KPFA.

Nico Slate shared a white mother with his brother Peter, but Nico’s father was white, whereas Peter’s was black. What did that matter? To whom did it matter? Slate has written a book remembering his older brother, recalling their relationship, and examining the charged sociopolitical context of their private and public lives. (Encore presentation.) Nico Slate, Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race Temple University Press, 2023 The post White Brother, Black Brother appeared first on KPFA.

The backlash against trans people, which has swept both the United States and the world in recent years, is not as new as it seems, according to historian Jules Gill-Peterson. She traces the emergence of trans misogynistic violence over the last two centuries, which she links to the establishment of colonialism, capitalism, and more recently neoliberalism. Resources: Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny Verso, 2024 The post Why Trans Misogyny? appeared first on KPFA.

What did the Communist Party accomplish in California, or try to? SFSU emeritus professor Robert W. Cherny considers the party’s agendas and activities in relation to longshore workers, labor unions, political figures, and others. He also examines the stances the party took toward the Roosevelt administration, the New Deal, the Comintern, and U.S. involvement in World War II. Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco Reds: Communists in the Bay Area, 1919-1958 University of Illinois Press, 2024 The post California’s Communists appeared first on KPFA.

Should Marxism be rooted in inter-species liberation? Or is it already, unbeknownst to most of us? Leigh Claire La Berge has delved into what she considers an unrecognized trove of evidence for Marxism’s deep engagement with the feline as a way of making sense of class society — and what would be necessary to leap beyond it. She argues that the history of inter-species solidarity between radicals and cats (among other animals) is only now starting to be recuperated. Resources: Leigh Claire La Berge, Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary Duke University Press, 2023 The post Cats and Marxism appeared first on KPFA.

What can sex workers add to discussions around transformative justice, prison abolition, and labor organizing? Heather Berg has spoken with sex worker radicals whose perspectives on left theory and practice are informed by encounters with ever-present threats to their lives and livelihoods. Heather Berg, “‘If You’re Going to Be Beautiful, You Better Be Dangerous’: Sex Worker Community Defense” Radical History Review Heather Berg, Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism University of North Carolina Press, 2021 The post Sex Worker Theorizing appeared first on KPFA.

In 1936, Nazi Germany hosted the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, amidst international calls to boycott. It was an enormously consequential event in the politics of the times, granting Hitler an international spotlight to promote the Third Reich. Much less known, as writer Michael Waters argues, is how Nazi eugenics and paranoia about transgender athletes gave rise to the gender surveillance that characterizes contemporary sports to this day. Resources: Michael Waters, The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024 The post The Nazi Origins of Gender Surveillance in Sports appeared first on KPFA.

In the years following the Russian Revolution, a popular resistance movement sprang up in Ukraine that drew its inspiration from a man named Nestor Makhno. Makhno went on to organize a seven-million-strong anarchist polity amidst the chaos and brutality of the Russian Civil War. Charlie Allison describes Makhno’s appeal, his political beliefs, and his rejection of Bolshevism. Charlie Allison, No Harmless Power: The Life and Times of the Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno PM Press, 2023 (Image on main page by Oleh Kushch.) The post Ukrainian Anarchist appeared first on KPFA.