Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast

This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power.

The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa (U California Press, 2025) tells the story of Nathaniel Isaacs—a nineteenth-century British Jew who helped establish the Zulu kingdom only to become a ruthless warlord and slaveholder. Isaacs’ thrilling journey begins with his shipwreck on the shores of Zululand and proceeds to ports across West Africa, including Freetown, Sierra Leone. There, tasked by the colonial governor to end the local slave trade, Isaacs brokered deals that reinforced his own power.

Adam Rovner’s meticulous archival research in England, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and St. Helena, coupled with his own travels to the remnants of Isaacs’ island stronghold in Guinea, brings this complex figure to life. Through Isaacs’ story, Rovner exposes the entangled forces of Jewish emancipation and antisemitism, slavery and abolition, the stark dichotomies of civilization and “savagery,” and the creation of whiteness versus Blackness.

Adam Rovner is Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver. He is the author of In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel (New York University Press, 2014).

Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.

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In this episode, Lilyanna D'Amato speaks with Rahim Kurwa about his book Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing (U California Press, 2025), which examines the policing of housing in Los Angeles' northernmost suburb, Antelope Valley. Kurwa traces the suburbs' relationship with Los Angeles from post WWII to the early 2000s and 2010s, when the region saw increased Black migration as result of the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, the largest rental assistance program for low-income families in the nation. Kurwa contextualizes the adoption and reception of the voucher system in Los Angeles at the end of the 20th century, and explores the participatory policing and criminalization practices used to evict Black residents and re-segregate the region.

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In this episode, the editors of the Journal of Autoethnography offer an inside look at the journal, discussing its origin and revisiting notable articles that have contributed to the practice of autoethnography.

The Journal of Autoethnography is published four times a year by the University of California Press. For more information about the journal, including subscription and submission information, please visit here. If you are interested in supporting the work of UC Press and its Journals Program, please consider making a charitable donation to the UC Press Foundation.

To learn more about the UC Press Foundation and how to contribute, please visit here.

Articles mentioned:

1. Matthew S. Johnston; Through Madness and Back Again: An Autoethnography of Psychosis. Journal of Autoethnography 11 May 2020; 1 (2): 137–155. doi: here
2. Jessica Smartt Gullion; The Mayhill Project. Journal of Autoethnography 1 January 2025; 6 (1): 37–49. doi: here
3. Elizabeth Stephens; Homicide by Police: Coping with Traumatic Death. Journal of Autoethnography 11 May 2020; 1 (2): 111–121. doi: here
4. Anonymous Author; Highlighting Numbers: Students Stalking Faculty and the Lasting Impacts of a Flawed System. Journal of Autoethnography 1 April 2021; 2 (2): 143–160. doi: here
5. Arthur P. Bochner; Autoethnography as a Way of Life: Listening to Tinnitus Teach. Journal of Autoethnography 7 January 2020; 1 (1): 81–92. doi: here
6. Csaba Osvath; Writing With and Against the Machine: Autoethnographic Reflections on AI, VR, and Narrative Becoming. Journal of Autoethnography 1 July 2026; 7 (3): 346–358. doi: here
7. Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir on the Craft. 2000. Simon & Schuster.
8. Goodall, H. Lloyd. A need to know: The clandestine history of a CIA family. Left Coast Press, 2006.
9. Robin M. Boylorn, Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience (Revised Edition, 2017). Peter Lang.
10. Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. 2019, Penguin.
11. Ellis, Carolyn. Revision: Autoethnographic reflections on life and work. 2019. Routledge.
12. A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals

Tony Adams is Caterpillar Professor of Communication at Bradley University.

Andrew F. Herrmann is CEO of Applicable Consulting LLC. 

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Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge.

Between 1989 and 2004, all the old studios either merged with other media giants or were swallowed up by even bigger diversified behemoths, leading to an infusion of money and fast-tracking the digital revolution. Yet even as CGI and piles of cash fueled a new breed of blockbusters—Batman and Titanic, Toy Story and The Lord of the Rings—an indie ethos permeated the industry. And at the crossroads of commodification and aesthetic vision, auteurs ranging from Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino to Sofia Coppola and Ang Lee became household names.

Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah with Thomas Schatz (U California Press, 2026) traces these trajectories, which increasingly clashed and commingled during the 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in nothing short of a new golden age—and perhaps the last gasp of the century-old studio system.

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In Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America's Favorite Breakfast Food (U California Press, 2026), world-renowned food politics expert Marion Nestle joins forces with former cereal executive Lisa Sutherland to examine what cereal boxes reveal about American culture and food politics. If you want to understand how the food business works, just have a look at a box of breakfast cereal. Hardly anything on supermarket shelves is bigger, bolder, or more deliberately designed. The fiercely competitive industry that brings us Cheerios, Froot Loops, and Trix sells a distinctly American dream: indulgence and health in one convenient package. Cereal boxes chronicle our shifting national obsessions with health, ingredients, dietary advice, and American culture. They show us what sells food: cartoons for kids, athletes for men, weight loss for women. And hidden in the history of cereal package designs, we find clues to the corporate lobbying that shapes agricultural policy, health claims, and labeling regulations. Sugar Coated unboxes the influence of cereal companies on food policy and the power of marketing, revealing, in the process, why Big Food is so good at selling profitable products regardless of their effects on health.

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Since the beginning of European colonization, the sun-drenched land of California has always attracted dreamers and schemers. Whether it was Spanish missionaries, Russian fur traders, or American argonauts, the myth - or perhaps brand - of California has long been a place here one's wildest dreams can come true. Starting in the late nineteenth century and accelerating in the twentieth, that myth also attracted a wide array of starry eyed spiritualists. In Golden States: How California Religion Went from Cautionary Tale to Global Brand (U California Press, 2024), Cal State Long Beach history professor Eileen Luhr explains how and why this state has been such a haven for utopianists, gurus, and spiritual seekers of all kinds. Explaining the stories of individuals from Katherine Tingley to Emmanual Bronner (of soap fame) to Steve Jobs, Luhr shows how the reputation of California as a haven for deep thinkers and outside the box ideas is both well earned, and was carefully crafted over the course of many strange and wonderful decades.

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The United States has no hate speech laws; hate speech is generally considered to be free speech under the First Amendment. In Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma (U California Press, 2026), acclaimed legal historian Samantha Barbas chronicles the country’s legal and cultural battles over the regulation of hate speech in the last hundred years. Charting the historical context for current debates, she ultimately argues that, however emotionally appealing they may seem, hate speech laws undermine civil rights and democracy.
The American policy on hate speech evolved from influences such as the civil rights movement, which contended that the most effective way to combat hate speech wasn’t through proposed laws. Rather than imposing restrictions, the US has developed an array of mechanisms other than law, including counterspeech and public education, that have been relatively effective at dealing with hate speakers and hate groups. Though not perfect, our method of addressing hate is less dangerous than government censorship and less likely to be weaponized against the powerless.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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The practice of history in premodern Java was profoundly influenced by precarious conditions of textual production and preservation: fragile manuscripts perished in the tropical environment, archival records were scattered far afield, and historical memories faded over many generations. InThe Precarious Past in Premodern Java, Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan examines how Javanese societies between the fifth and fifteenth centuries CE responded with distinctive strategies to record and transmit knowledge of the past.

Drawing on sources in Javanese, Sanskrit, Malay, and related languages from the Indonesian archipelago, Sastrawan provides a detailed account of diverse forms of history making in premodern Java, reconstructing a dynamic culture in which written and nonwritten modes of transmission coexisted and intersected. By situating these practices within broader discussions of global historiography, this book challenges modern assumptions about what counts as “history” and illuminates how societies have developed different ways of preserving and remembering the past.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit here to learn more.

Dr Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan is a historian, lecturer and DECRA research fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra.

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In this episode, Melissa Fuster and Rosi Song of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective introduce the journal’s latest issue, Fall 2026 (volume 26, issue 3), now available online. Melissa talks with Rosi about what goes into putting a Gastronomica issue together and the backstory of issue 26.3. Rosi shares the inspiration behind her editorial letter and the issue’s thematic focus on migration and food networks, recounting her own journey moving and living across the globe, from South Korea to Paraguay, the United States, and now the U.K. Their discussion highlights new research articles, creative nonfiction writing, and photography from the pages of the journal on topics related to trust building, food networks, provisioning, and nourishment, including a special feature on migrant foodways and culinary mobilities in Japan.

Read Rosi Song’s editorial letter here for the Fall 2026 issue of Gastronomica and access the articles in this latest issue online at the University of California Press here.

H. Rosi Song is a professor of Hispanic Studies at Durham University in the U.K., co-author of A Taste of Barcelona: The History of Catalan Cooking and Eating (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), and a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. She leads a Horizon Europe project on food, culture, and recipes titled RELISH (Reframing European Gastronomy Legacy through Innovation, Sustainability, and Heritage).

Melissa Fuster is an associate professor of Public Health Nutrition at Tulane University, author of Caribeños at the Table: How Migration, Health, and Race Intersect in New York City (UNC Press, 2021), and a member of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective.

Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies here is published by the University of California Press here. Quarterly issues are available in print and online.

Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes.

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One year after the publication of Gastronomica’s special feature on food and philosophy, Robert T. Valgenti of the Editorial Collective revisits the question of what a philosophical perspective could bring to addressing food-related issues. In this episode, he talks with Gastronomica author and philosopher Sascha Benjamin Fink about human perception and how people experience the world, taking up questions at the cutting edge of science, art, and gastronomy. Sascha discusses the role of the senses and sensory manipulation in gastronomy and explains how common experiences of eating can lend real-world insights into sensory engineering. Over the course of their conversation Bob and Sascha consider different examples – such as the setting of the table, spatial design, experimental cuisine, and the use of AI in recipe development – and weigh in on what sensory engineering can also reveal about gastronomy. The article Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering, co-authored by Sascha Benjamin Fink and Brandon Ashby, appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Gastronomica.

“Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering” was one of fifteen short papers in a special section dedicated to philosophical perspectives on food issues. Access the articles in volume 25.3 of the journal here and learn more about the special section in Episode 53: Mapping Food and Philosophy of the Gastronomica podcast.

Sascha Benjamin Fink works on the philosophy of mind with research interests in consciousness, sensory engineering, and new technologies, and most recently has been Director of Research at the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. As of August 2026, he works at the University of Cologne on sensory engineering in the DFG-AHRC Project SENSOR (DFG 527947799).

Robert T. Valgenti is a professor of liberal arts and food studies at The Culinary Institute of America. A philosopher and translator, he works on the philosophy of food, Italian philosophy, and hermeneutics and is a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica.

Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online.

Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes.

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