University of Minnesota Press

SICKENING is a book that examines the unconscionable disparity in health outcomes between Black and white Americans. Author Anne Pollock of King’s College London takes readers through anti-Black racism operating in healthcare: from the spike in chronic disease after Hurricane Katrina to the lack of protection for Black residents during the Flint water crisis—and even the life-threatening childbirth experience for tennis star Serena Williams. Ruha Benjamin of Princeton University joins Pollock in conversation. Pollock is professor of global health and social medicine at King’s College London. She is author of ‘Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States’; ‘Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference’; and ‘Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery.’Ruha Benjamin is professor of African American studies at Princeton University, founding director of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab, author of two books: ‘People Science’ and ‘Race After Technology,’ and editor of ‘Captivating Technology.’"A crucial guided analysis of anti-Blackness and its impact on Black people’s ability to live as fully entitled citizens, Pollock’s scholarship is essential medicine for a society in denial about its sickness." —Foreword 

”Adapting Balzac is no small feat for any filmmaker” (Variety)—or any translator. LOST ILLUSIONS and LOST SOULS are two newly translated volumes in Honoré de Balzac’s vast HUMAN COMEDY, a sprawling and interconnected fictional portrait of early nineteenth-century France. Keenly attuned to the acerbic charm and subtleties of Balzac’s prose, these editions are invaluable resources for today’s readers as they navigate the author’s copious allusions to classical and contemporaneous politics and literature. In this episode, MacKenzie is interviewed by University of Minnesota Press director Doug Armato about Balzac’s incomparable style and the intricacies of translation. (Spoiler alert: Key plot points from Lost Illusions and Lost Souls are discussed.)Other University of Minnesota Press translations by MacKenzie include:Red and Black (Stendhal), forthcoming in summer 2022Italian Chronicles (Stendhal)Diaboliques (Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly)Graziella (Alphonse de Lamartine)Brouhaha (Lionel Ruffel)

Dianne Harris offers a rare exploration of the racial and class politics of architecture in her book LITTLE WHITE HOUSES, which examines how postwar media representations associated the ordinary single-family house with middle-class whites to the exclusion of others. This book adds a new dimension to our understanding of race in America and the inequalities that persist in the housing market in the United States. Harris is an architectural historian and dean of the University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences. She is joined in conversation by Mabel O. Wilson, an architect, designer, cultural historian, and curator who teaches at Columbia University. This conversation was recorded in July 2021.

Race plays a fundamental role in naturalizing social, political, and economic inequalities in the United States. Daniel Martinez HoSang and Joseph Lowndes document the changing politics of race and class in the age of Trump in their book PRODUCERS, PARASITES, PATRIOTS: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, which ultimately brings to light the changing role of race in right-wing politics. Racial subordination is an enduring feature of US political history, and it continually changes in response to shifting economic and political conditions. HoSang and Lowndes are here with a primer on, and insightful analyses of, The 1619 Project launched by the New York Times in August 2019, The 1776 Report commissioned by Donald Trump and released in January 2021, and recent and ongoing attacks on critical race theory in the US.

The dynamics of adoptee communities have shifted in the decades since the first edition of OUTSIDERS WITHIN was published in 2006, yet the volume continues to provide critical perspectives that have gained renewed relevance during contemporary crises. Here, three writers and artists, Korean and Vietnamese adoptees who were adopted across geographic borders in the 1970s, talk isolation, racism, identity struggle, adoption policy, and how the Internet has changed the ways connection can be found. This conversation was recorded in May 2021.Jane Jeong Trenka is an activist and award-winning writer who was adopted from South Korea to Minnesota in 1972. She has a master of public administration from Seoul National University and was instrumental in revising Korea’s adoption law in 2011. She is author of the memoir ‘The Language of Blood’ and co-editor of ‘Outsiders Within,’ published in a new edition by University of Minnesota Press.Dr. Indigo Willing is a sociologist, lecturer, and creator of the Adopted Vietnamese International (AVI) network for adoptees from the Vietnamese community and war refugee generation. She lives in Australia.kimura byol-nathalie lemoine is an artist, activist, and archivist, and a Korean-born adoptee who grew up in Belgium and currently resides in Montreal. kimura*lemoine is co-founder of Euro-Korean League and an active member and archivist for the interracial adoptee community.Outsiders Within: z.umn.edu/outsiderswithin

What if we attended to an ailing ecosystem just as we would a body in the throes of a chronic medical condition? Ranae Lenor Hanson’s memoir WATERSHED encourages us to discover how the health of our bodies and the health of the world they inhabit are inextricably linked. In this episode, Hanson is joined by educators and community leaders Lena Jones and Teddie Potter. Ranae Lenor Hanson is an educator and climate activist who taught writing and global studies at Minneapolis College (MCTC) for 31 years. Lena Jones is a political science faculty member at Minneapolis College and connected to the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy. Teddie Potter is Clinical Professor and Director of Planetary Health in the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota."The credo ‘water is life’ has become a key environmental rallying cry in the years since Standing Rock, and this book helps us remember why. It recalls an American past, inhabits a global present, and imagines a working future—it will be an aid to many as they grapple with our difficult moment."—Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author of The End of Nature

The Migrant’s Paradox connects global migration with urban marginalization, exploring how “race” maps onto place across the globe, state, and street. Suzanne Hall examines the brutal contradictions of sovereignty and capitalism in the formation of street livelihoods in the urban margins in five cities in Britain, in places where jobs are hard to come by and the impacts of historic state underinvestment are deeply felt. Hall is associate professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is joined in this episode by Tariq Jazeel, professor in human geography at University College London; Huda Tayob, senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Cape Town; and Les Back, professor of sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. This conversation was recorded in May 2021. It is published in partnership between the University of Minnesota Press and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

Craig Robertson’s THE FILING CABINET explores how this now-neglected artifact profoundly shaped the way that information and data have been sorted, stored, retrieved, and used. Invented in the 1890s, the filing cabinet continues to shape how we interact with information and data in the digital age. In this episode, Robertson, who is associate professor of media studies at Northeastern University in Boston (also author of THE PASSPORT IN AMERICA), is joined by Shannon Mattern, professor of anthropology at The New School in New York City, and Lisa Gitelman, professor of English and media studies at New York University. This conversation was recorded in May 2021. About the book: z.umn.edu/thefilingcabinet

Jamie Lorimer’s THE PROBIOTIC PLANET calls for a rethinking of artificial barriers between science and policy and a sweeping overview of diverse probiotic approaches. Bruce Clarke’s GAIAN SYSTEMS is a pioneering exploration of the complex evolution of Gaia’s many variants. In a conversation that ranges from Lynn Margulis to science fiction, neocybernetics to COVID-19, Lorimer and Clarke ultimately seek insight into solving an environmental crisis of humanity’s own making. This conversation was recorded in November 2020. BOOKS: The Probiotic Planet: z.umn.edu/theprobioticplanet Gaian Systems: z.umn.edu/gaiansystems REFERENCES: Helminth, a species of parasitic worm Heather Paxson on raw milk cheese Bruno Latour Isabelle Stengers Donna Haraway James Lovelock Lynn Margulis Lyndisfarne Conferences Stewart Brand O’Neill cylinder William Gibson’s Neuromancer Stanisław Lem Frank Herbert’s Dune

CAPTURE is a book that reveals how the drive to contain and record disappearing animals was a central feature and organizing pursuit of the nineteenth-century US cultural canon. In a conversation that ranges from references to Muybridge and Audubon, Poe and Hawthorne, Whitman and Thoreau, environmental humanities and biopolitics, presentation and representation, capture and captivity, (with a cameo from Sylvester Graham of the Graham cracker), Antoine Traisnel (author of CAPTURE) joins Michelle Neely (author of AGAINST SUSTAINABILITY) in a lively and rigorous discussion. Traisnel is assistant professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Michigan. Neely is associate professor of English at Connecticut College. This conversation was recorded in March 2021. BOOKS DISCUSSED: Capture: http://z.umn.edu/capturebook Against Sustainability: https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823288205/against-sustainability/ REFERENCES: Eadweard Muybridge James Fenimore Cooper Edgar Allan Poe Nathaniel Hawthorne Gerald Vizenor Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am Nicole Shukin Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows John James Audubon Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project Herman Melville, Moby Dick Jeremy Bentham Michel Foucault and biopolitics Walt Whitman Lucille Clifton Henry David Thoreau Emily Dickinson Sylvester Graham (of the Graham cracker) Seed vault / Doomsday Vault