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Journal of the Cultural Studies Association

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Book Reviews

Reviews of books relevant to the field of cultural studies

Fighting Feelings: Lessons in Gendered Racism and Queer Life by Gulzar R. Charania (University of British Columbia Press)

By Hannah Renda

Just Kids: Youth Activism and Rhetorical Agency by Risa Applegarth (Ohio State University Press)

By Tennae Maki

Marx for Cats by Leigh Claire La Berge (Duke University Press)

By Rachael Mulvihill

Violent Intimacies: The Trans Everyday and the Making of an Urban World by Aslı Zengin (Duke University Press)

By Avik Sarkar

Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Indigenous Media in Canada by Karrmen Crey (University of Minnesota Press)

By Meghan Hipple

Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds by Arseli Dokumacı (Duke University Press)

By Emalee Crews

Maroon Choreography by fahima ife (Duke University Press)

By Walter Lucken IV

The Life Worth Living: Disability, Pain, and Morality by Joel Michael Reynolds (University of Minnesota Press)

By Kora Dzbinski

Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance by Moya Bailey (New York University Press)

By Yiming Wang

Dancing Indigenous Worlds: Choreographies of Relation by Jacqueline Shea Murphy (University of Minnesota Press)

By Diana Duarte Bernal

Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life: Settler States and Indigenous Presence edited by René Dietrich and Kerstin Knopf (Duke University Press)

By Leah Kuragano

Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life by Sarah Jane Cervenak (Duke University Press)

By Kelann Currie-Williams

Plastic Matter by Heather Davis (Duke University Press)

By Chayne Wild

Feels Right: Black Queer Women and the Politics of Partying in Chicago by Kemi Adeyemi (Duke University Press)

By Naz Oktay

Death’s Futurity: The Visual Life of Black Power by Sampada Aranke (Duke University Press)

By Jenna M. Wilson

Passionate Work: Endurance After the Good Life by Renyi Hong (Duke University Press)

By Kuansong Victor Zhuang

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Social Media’s Influence on Fashion, Ethics, and Property by Minh-ha T. Pham (Duke University Press)

By Elizabeth Verklan

Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis & Cultural Strategy by Ben Davis (Haymarket Books)

By Tennae Maki

Breathing Aesthetics by Jean-Thomas Tremblay (Duke University Press)

By Tori McCandless

Translating Blackness: Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspective by Lorgia García Peña (Duke University Press)

By Shreya Parikh

The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment by Cameron Awkward-Rich (Duke University Press)

By Claudia Schippert

The Digitally Disposed: Racial Capitalism and the Informatics of Value by Seb Franklin (University of Minnesota Press)

By Hannah Glasson

Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics by V. Jo Hsu (The Ohio State University Press)

By Stacey Park

Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory by Cristina Visperas (New York University Press)

By Patrick Michael Teed

Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures by Jose O. Fernandez (The Ohio State University Press)

By Laura Irwin

The Breaks: An Essay by Julietta Singh (Coffee House Press)

By Pavithra Suresh

Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò (Haymarket Books / Pluto Press)

By Hunter Hilinski

Spectacle and Diversity: Transnational Media and Global Culture by Lee Artz (Routledge)

By Brittney Jimenez-Bayardo

Warring Visions: Photography and Vietnam by Thy Phu (Duke University Press)

By Collin Hawley

Media and the Affective Life of Slavery by Allison Page (University of Minnesota Press)

By Michael L. Thomas

Making Livable Worlds: Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice by Hilda Lloréns (University of Washington Press)

By Donna Elizabeth Hayles

Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium by Mila Zuo (Duke University Press)

By E. Nastacia Schmoll

Fates of the Performative: From the Linguistic Turn to the New Materialism by Jeffrey T. Nealon (University of Minnesota Press)

By Abigail Culpepper

Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media by micha cárdenas (Duke University Press)

By Shano (Hongyuan) Liang and Michael Anthony DeAnda

Magical Habits by Monica Huerta (Duke University Press)

By Anaïs Ornelas Ramirez

We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba (Haymarket Books)

By Esteban Kelly

How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity by La Marr Jurelle Bruce (Duke University Press)

By Liz Miller

Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable by Eric A. Stanley (Duke University Press)

By Kerry Keith

The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom by Jessa Lingel (University of California Press)

By Alyce Currier

Transgender Marxism edited by Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O’Rourke (Pluto Press)

By E Lev Feinman

Remembering Our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea by Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio (University of Minnesota Press)

By Makana Kushi

Trans Care by Hil Malatino (University of Minnesota Press)

By Alex Barksdale

The Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment by Jillian Hernandez (Duke University Press)

By Iván Ramos

History on the Run: Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Hmong Refugee Epistemologies by Ma Vang (Duke University Press)

By Aline Lo

The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Freedom by Rinaldo Walcott (Duke University Press)

By Shauna Rigaud

Ocean Passages: Navigating Pacific Islander and Asian American Literatures by Erin Suzuki (Temple University Press)

By Sandra So Hee Chi Kim

Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawaiʻi by Candace Fujikane (Duke University Press)

By Hiʻilei Julia Hobart

A Violent Peace: Race, U.S. Militarism, and Cultures of Democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific by Christine Hong (Stanford University Press)

By Annie Hui

Television and the Afghan Culture Wars Brought to You by Foreigners, Warlords, and Activists by Wazhmah Osman (University of Illinois Press)

By Aparna Shastri

Dear Science and Other Stories by Katherine McKittrick (Duke University Press)

By Jade How and Gada Mahrouse

Infrastructures of Apocalypse: American Literature and the Nuclear Complex by Jessica Hurley (University of Minnesota Press)

By Douglas Dowland

Another Aesthetics is Possible: Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War by Jennifer Ponce de León (Duke University Press)

By Michael Dango

Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice by Zakiya Luna (New York University Press)

By Djuna Hallsworth

Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam by Evren Savcı (Duke University Press)

By Leelan Farhan

Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures by André Brock, Jr. (New York University Press)

By Nora Suren

Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University by Matthew Brim (Duke University Press)

By Adrian Switzer

Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century by Alyson K. Spurgas (The Ohio State University Press)

By Sophie Webb

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade (Verso Books)

By Paul Centorame

Gestures of Concern by Chris Ingraham (Duke University Press)

By Nicole Dib

Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation by Jennifer Robertson (University of California Press)

By Sara Wenger

Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games by Christopher B. Patterson (New York University Press)

By Ian Sinnett

Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man by Joshua Bennett (Harvard University Press)

By Sohum Pal

Disruptive Situations: Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut by Ghassan Moussawi (Temple University Press)

By Robert Flahive

Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California Iranian Pop Music by Farzaneh Hemmasi (Duke Press)

By Siavash Rokni

The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles by David Harvey (Pluto Press)

By Austin Gallas

Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age by Brian Jefferson (University of Minnesota Press)

By Anastasia Kārkliņa

Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the Twenty-First Century by A. Naomi Paik (University of California Press)

By Travis Franks

The University and Social Justice: Struggles across the Globe edited by Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally (Pluto Press / Between the Lines)

By Vineeta Singh

Art as Revolt: Thinking Politics Through Immanent Aesthetics, edited by David Fancy and Hans Skott-Myhre (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

By Sean T. Leavey

Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice by Robert F. Carley (State University of New York Press)

By jeffrey masko

Media Hoaxing: The Yes Men and Utopian Politics by Ian Reilly (Lexington Books)

By Natalia Kovalyova

Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies by Dylan Robinson (University of Minnesota Press)

By Hannah Standiford

Palestinian Theatre in the West Bank: Our Human Faces by Gabriel Varghese (Palgrave MacMillan)

By Joshua Hamzehee

Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War by Ronak K. Kapadia (Duke University Press)

By Eric Vazquez

Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico by Marisol LeBrón (University of California Press)

By Angel Rodriguez Rivera

I’m Not Like Everybody Else: Biopolitics, Neoliberalism, and American Popular Music by Jeffrey Nealon (University of Nebraska Press)

By David Arditi

Inside the Critics’ Circle by Phillipa K Chong (Princeton University Press)

By Nikoleta Zampaki

Poetry and Animals: Blurring the Boundaries with the Human by Onno Oerlemans (Columbia University Press)

By Anne Llewellyn Morgan

Iconoclasm: The Breaking and Making of Images edited by Rachel F. Stapleton and Antonio Viselli (McGill-Queen University Press)

By Charles Athanasopoulos

The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies by Tiffany Lethabo King (Duke University Press)

By Laura Goldblatt

What’s the Use?: On the Uses of Use by Sara Ahmed (Duke University Press)

By Caroline Kinderthain

Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai`i and Oceania by Maile Arvin (Duke University Press)

By Christine Rosenfeld

Fire and Snow: Climate Fiction from the Inklings to Game of Thrones by Marc DiPaolo (State University of New York Press)

By Alisa M. Schreibman

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings (New York University Press)

By Meshell Sturgis

Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology by Adrienne Mayor (Princeton University Press)

By Michael Buozis

Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America by Brett Story (University of Minnesota Press)

By Marcia Klotz

Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam by Sylvia Chan-Malik (NYU Press)

By Najwa Mayer

Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad by Manu Karuka (University of California Press)

By Julia H. Lee

Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance by Robert McRuer (NYU Press)

By Caroline Alphin

Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women’s Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War by Kristen Ghodsee (Duke University Press)

By Steven Gotzler

Talking White Trash: Mediated Representations and Lived Experiences of White-Working Class People by Tasha R. Dunn (Routledge)

By Holly Willson Holladay

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman (W. W. Norton & Company)

By Patrice D. Douglass

Postcolonial Grief: The Afterlives of the Pacific Wars in the Americas by Jinah Kim (Duke University Press)

By Corinne Mitsuye Sugino

Make America Meme Again: The Rhetoric of the Alt-Right by Heather Suzanne Woods & Leslie A. Hahner (Peter Lang)

By Michael Mario Albrecht

Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance by Amber Jamilla Musser (NYU Press)

By Stephen Felder

The Cultural Production of Intellectual Property Rights: Law, Labor, and the Persistence of Primitive Accumulation by Sean Johnson Andrews (Temple University Press)

By Jared M. Wright

Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt by AK Thompson (AK Press)

By Kate Siegfried

The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor After the Avant-Garde by Stevphen Shukaitis (Rowman & Littlefield International)

By Andrew J. Wood

Farm Worker Futurism: Speculative Technologies of Resistance by Curtis Marez (University of Minnesota Press)

By lewis levenberg

Postcolonial Nations, Islands, and Tourism: Reading Real and Imagined Spaces by Helen Kapstein (Rowman & Littlefield International)

By Yadira Gamez

Lateral is the peer-reviewed, open access journal of the Cultural Studies Association.

 

ISSN 2469-4053

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC) License, unless otherwise noted.

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Shana Agid: “what is it about the attempt, as an actor, to navigate not only opposing, but making as the response to that opposition, that throws us into motion, into relationships not of theoretical power, but of metaphors of relational force?”

×


Meiner/Harkins: Our own response to the problem of “professionalization” is to mix the languages used across the spaces and modes of labor related to higher education programs inside prisons. This includes a blend of administrative, logical, and political rhetorics alongside various vernaculars produced by our experiences working within higher education programs in prison, institutions of higher education outside prison, and activist networks exposing and seeking to transform the connections between the prison and the University/college as institutions. These vernaculars include reference to efficiency and outcomes, academic disciplines, and the discourses surrounding the prison nation. We do this because the risk of “professional” publication on higher education programs inside prison is similar to those outlined at the outset of this section: higher education programs inside prisons supplement the failing University, offset its negligence specifically in the realm of alleged “criminality,” and displace criminality into service absorbed as value by the University. Publishing critique of this phenomena threatens to exacerbate the general problem of professional university critique. We don’t think this is a simple problem, and it does not have a simple solution.

×


Shana Agid: Ours is now a design-led university. This term packages and codifies in our university identity (both in the philosophical sense and in the branded one) a kind of burgeoning confidence among designers, design education, and designing professions to both name and take on “wicked problems.”

×


Sora Han: “We are hearing here abolition as a mode of being against social relations invested and investing in promises of sovereignty and self-possession. This object of abolition is not a form of self-possession “that could have” (including the capacity to eliminate anything) but in its unconditional vulnerability to, not simply the relations of material or symbolic possession, but also the very capacity to posses anything, it also becomes something with and in dispossession.”

David Stein: “Capital will not provide the necessary jobs for the current number of people, college graduates or not, unless it sees appropriate rates of profit in such an expenditure. As David Broderick, C.E.O. of U.S. Steel put it “U.S. Steel is in business to make profits, not to make steel.”[xiv] Or as the founder of the Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix put it: “This is a corporation…Coming here is not a rite of passage. We’re not trying to develop [students’] or go in for that ‘expand their minds’ bullshit.”

×


David Stein: “…the cause of the crisis of daily subsistence and unemployment (which is a relatively recent phenomena for unemployed and under-employed college graduates whose skills and geography will not translate into jobs) then it is the universities that are seen as having failed to do their proper training;[xi] or worse, it is the students failing to appropriately assess which professions were in need of workers and choose an agenda of study accordingly…”

×


Meiners and Harkin: “But to do this, we must run the risk of staking our claims, and naming some terms. For us greater specification, and more visibility, is key to moving college in prison programs from the interstices of institutional structure to a leverage point whose operation holds the potential to disrupt business as usual.”

×


Sora Han: “Toward what does the “prison abolitionist” identity or identification strive? This is far from a simple question. For the history of abolitionism has never been fully present (the abolition of slavery, the abolition of Jim Crow, the abolition of apartheid). In this sense, abolition is an event that has yet to arrive. So, what is, or rather is there something, being affirmed in the identity or identification as a “prison abolitionist” today? How does one identify with something that, as such, has no precedent?”

×


Sora Han: “The concept of torque…can be traced back to Archimedes, who’s famous (among many other things) for his spiral that twists surface and thus moves volume.  It strikes me that his spiral is a structure of (non)enclosed movement, but independent of human uses of the design, the law of the design is nondirective and infinite, in both movement and dependence on force — on torque.”

Gillian Harkins and Erica Mieners: “For us greater specification, and more visibility, is key to moving college in prison programs from the interstices of institutional structure to a leverage point whose operation holds the potential to disrupt business as usual.”

David Stein: “Commoning, in this sense, is the practice against enclosure: the insistent struggle for means of subsistence and survival, plentitude and freedom.”

×


Shana Agid: we continue to make anyway, that making anyway is abolitionist practice in necessarily imperfect conditions.

×


Sora Han: One thinks, interestingly, of all the pro se lawsuits filed by prisoners that ultimately were the reason for the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act. It wasn’t that prisoners were filing bad lawsuits as a concerted political tactic, but that they were in good faith filing lawsuits that because of their unprofessional expertise—or non-knowledge—produced pleadings that judges over and over again dismissed for “lack of legal merit.” That is, the elements of the pleading were not sufficiently met—in the language of the rules of federal civil procedure, they “failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted”

×


The “crisis” in the university is more accurately described as a transformation in the values associated with higher education, including a decreasing public stake in humanistic or arts education and increasing investment in job readiness and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields across two and four year educational attainment levels.

×