MSU Press Podcast

The Crisis of School Violence is the only interdisciplinary book about school violence. It presents a broad and in-depth approach to the key questions about why bullying continues at an unprecedentedly high rate and why rampage shootings continue to shock the nation. Based on extensive research, the book investigates human nature and its relation to aggressive behavior, with a special focus on the culture of violence that predicates school violence and perpetuates industries that profit from violence. The Crisis of School Violence presents the considerable psychological and neuroscientific research on the effects of violent entertainment media on the brain and behavior, which clearly reveals a causal connection between exposure to violent media, especially violent video games, and increased violent behavior.
 
Marianna King’s academic and other professional work focuses on violence and violence prevention. As an educator, she has worked with elementary school children in gang-active communities as well as university students, gang members, and violent offenders. She’s published articles for the National School Boards Association, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and other professional organizations. Because of her groundbreaking work on violence prevention, she was honored with a New Mexico Woman of the Year award in the year 2000.
 
 The Crisis of School Violence: A New Perspective, is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can learn more about the book at its website: www.schoolviolencebook.com. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on Twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.
 

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to Daniel Trego, Madiha Ghous, Kylene Cave, and the team at MSU Press for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

In his new book, The Manufacture of Consent, Dr. Underhill treats J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure as FBI director as a case study in political power, focusing on the rhetorical nature of that power. He analyzes Hoover’s relationship with the presidency, the press, and the film industry to reveal the ways in which Hoover was able to use prevailing discourses of racial, gender, class, and religious hierarchies to dominate the media and to create and sustain the role of the FBI in United States society. Thus, the book illuminates both the history of the FBI and the political and ideological debates of the era. As Ned O’Gorman puts it, the book is a brilliant investigation into the ways J. Edgar Hoover coopted the rhetorical themes and techniques of twentieth-century American liberals and progressives to fortify a virtual American police state. 

Dr. Underhill is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Marshall University. He served as the lead reference person for classified FBI and Department of Justice textual records at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland, from 2007 to 2012.

The Manufacture of Consent: J. Edgar Hoover and The Rhetorical Rise of the FBI is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can find more information about the book on its Facebook page, and Dr. Underhill is on Twitter @s_m_underhill. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on Twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to Daniel Trego, Madiha Ghous, Kylene Cave, and the team at MSU Press, especially Elise Jajuga and Julie Reaume, for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades is the journal of the Association of Gender and Sexuality Studies. First published in the spring of 1975 at the University of Colorado, Denver, REGS is one of the earliest academic journals devoted to gender-related issues, women authors, and feminist theory in the contexts of Hispanic literatures and cultures. Published biannually in a mix of Spanish and English, the journal includes critical articles on gender studies topics; unpublished work by Spanish, Latin American, and Latino/a authors, poets, and playwrights; interviews with writers, artists, filmmakers, and critics; and a substantial book review section in every issue.

In addition serving as the editor of REGS, Dr. Quispe-Agnoli is Professor of (Post) Colonial Latin American Studies with affiliations in the American Indian Studies Program and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Michigan State University. Dr. Quispe-Agnoli is also a well-published author of both academic and creative works, most recently Women’s Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500-1799 (Routledge 2017). José Badillo Carlos is a PhD candidate in Hispanic Cultural Studies and is currently finishing his doctoral dissertation on Mexico’s corruption and violence in contemporary cultural productions.

Issues of Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades are available from msupress.org and in jstor and other fine scholarly databases. You can find the journal on Twitter @aegs2018 and on YouTube. Dr. Quispe-Agnoli is on Twitter and Instagram. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on Twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb. You can rate and review the show in Apple podcasts or send your feedback to [email protected]. 

On the hot summer evening of July 2, 1863, at the climax of the struggle for a Pennsylvania hill called Little Round Top, four Confederate regiments charge up the western slope, attacking the smallest and most exposed of their Union foe: the 16th Michigan Infantry. Terrible fighting has raged, but what happens next will ultimately—and unfairly—stain the reputation of one of the Army of the Potomac’s veteran combat outfits, made up of men from Detroit, Sagniaw, and other Michigan locales.

In the dramatic interpretation of the struggle for Little Round Top that followed the Battle of Gettysburg, the 16th Michigan Infantry would be remember as the one that broke during perhaps the most important turning point in the war. Their colonel, a young lawyer from Ann Arbor, would pay with his life, redeeming his own reputation, while a kind of code of silence about what happened at Little Round Top was adopted by the regiment’s survivors.

From soldiers’ letters, journals, and memoirs, Kim Crawford’s book, The 16th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War, relates their experiences in camp, on the march, and in battle, including their controversial role at Gettysburg, up to the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House. The book has been very well reviewed, including by Military Images and the Michigan Historical Review, According to Civil War News, “This is historical writing at its finest ... a finely crafted regimental history ... [that is] entertaining, informative and well sourced.”

Kim Crawford. Crawford is a retired newspaper reporter and the author of The Daring Trader: Jacob Smith in the Michigan Territory, 1802-1825 and coauthor of The 4th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War. He has written about Michigan Civil War soldiers for Michigan History magazine, served as guest curator for the Flint Sloan Museum’s 2012 Civil War exhibit, “The Brave and the Faithful,” and he has given talks on both the 4th and 16th Michigan Infantry regiments to historical societies and Civil War roundtables.

The 16th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War, is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to Daniel Trego, Madiha Ghous, Donté Smith, Kylene Cave, and the team at MSU Press, especially Elise Jajuga and Julie Reaume, for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

Anthropology and Radical Humanism is based on the work of the famed ethnographer of the Winnebago, Paul Radin. During his three-year appointment at Fisk University in the late 1920s, Radin and a graduate student, Andrew Polk Watson, collected autobiographies and religious conversion narratives from elderly African Americans. Their texts represent the first systematic record of slavery as told by former slaves. Radin regarded each narrative as the unimpeachable self-representation of a unique, thoughtful individual, precisely the perspective marking his earlier Winnebago work. As a radical humanist, Radin was an outspoken critic of racial explanations of human affairs then pervading not only popular thinking but also historical and sociological scholarship, placing him in the vanguard of anti-racist scholarship. Utilizing this material and other archival and published sources, Jack Glazier revisits the Radin-Watson collection and sets Paul Radin’s findings within the broader context of his discipline, African American culture, and Radin’s career-defining work among the Winnebago.

Jack Glazier is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Oberlin College and former president of the Central States Anthropological Society. He is a fellow of the American Anthropological Association and the Royal Anthropological Institute. His previous books include Been Coming through Some Hard Times: Race, History, and Memory in Western Kentucky and Dispersing the Ghetto: The Relocation of Jewish Immigrants across America.

Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race, is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to Daniel Trego, Madiha Ghous, Donté Smith, Kylene Cave, and the team at MSU Press, especially Elise Jajuga and Julie Reaume, for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

The Eagle Has Eyes is the first book of its kind to bring transparency to the FBI’s attempts to destroy the incipient Chicano Movement of the 1960s. The role of the US government in suppressing marginalized racial and ethnic minorities began to be documented with the advent of the Freedom of Information Act, and the book utilizes declassified files from the FBI to investigate the agency’s role in thwarting the efforts of César Chavez’s to build a labor union for farm workers. The book also documents the roles of the FBI, California state police, and local police in assisting those who opposed Chavez. In the words of Eloy García, the book “masterfully connects the dots of US government surveillance ... helping us understand the cowed public silence in the present perilous era of the Orwellian ‘national security’ matrix.”

José Angel Gutiérrez is the author of many other books documenting the Chicano Movement all which are informed by his prominent role as a leader and community organizer. Gutiérrez is Professor Emeritus of the University of Texas at Arlington, where he founded the Center for Mexican American Studies. He maintains a law practice and is the President of the Greater Dallas Legal and Community Development Foundation.

The Eagle Has Eyes: The FBI Surveillance of César Estrada Chavez of the United Farm Workers Union of America, 1965-1975, is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to Daniel Trego, Madiha Ghous, Donté Smith, Kylene Cave, and the team at MSU Press, especially Elise Jajuga and Julie Reaume, for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

On today’s episode, we’re joined by Paul Stob to discuss his book, Intellectual Populism: Democracy, Inquiry, and the People. In response to denunciations of populism as undemocratic and anti-intellectual, Intellectual Populism argues that populism has contributed to a distinct and democratic intellectual tradition in which ordinary people assume leading roles in the pursuit of knowledge. Focusing on the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras, the book uses case studies of intellectual figures to trace key rhetorical appeals that proved capable of resisting the status quo and building alternative communities of inquiry. As the book shows, figures like Robert Ingersoll, Mary Baker Eddy, Thomas Davidson, Booker T. Washington, and Zitkala-Sa deployed populist rhetoric to rally ordinary people as thinkers in new intellectual efforts. In sum, Intellectual Populism demonstrates how orators and advocates can channel the frustrations and energies of the American people toward productive, democratic intellectual ends. 

Paul Stob is Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at Vanderbilt University. Stob’s research explores the intersection of rhetoric, intellectual culture, and public advocacy in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era United States. In addition to Intellectual Populism, he is author of William James and the Art of Popular Statement and coeditor of Thinking Together: Lecturing, Learning, and Difference in the Long Nineteenth Century. 

Intellectual Populism is available from msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can find out more about the book at intellectualpopulism.com, and Stob is on Twitter @paulstob. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to Daniel Trego, Madiha Ghous, Donté Smith, Kylene Cave, and the team at MSU Press, especially Elise Jajuga and Julie Reaume, for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

Dr. Tryon Woods is Associate Professor of crime and justice studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where he teaches Black Studies and critical approaches to de-disciplining knowledge. In Blackhood against the Police Power, Dr. Woods “addresses the punishment of ‘race’ and the disavowal of sexual violence central to the contemporary ‘post racial’ culture of politics."

Blackhood against the Police Power, is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can find him online at tryonpwoods.wixsite.com/mysite. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to Daniel Trego, Madiha Ghous, Donté Smith, Kylene Cave, and the team at MSU Press, especially Elise Jajuga and Julie Reaume, for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

In (New) Fascism, Dr. Lawtoo discusses the new forms of fascism haunting our contemporary political scene. He reads this new style of fascism and crowd psychology through the lens of mimetic theory and traces the genealogy of (new) fascism back to the three related mimetic concepts of contagion, community, and myth. These concepts were once central to the spread of fascism in Europe and are now proving central to the rise of new fascisms as well. As Dr. Lawtoo writes, “A protean figure ... is now occupying the leading role on the political stage, [one that] relies on ‘falseness,’ ‘simulation,’ ‘appearance,’ and ‘an excess of the capacity for all kinds of adaptations.’ In the process, [this (new) fascist] gives voice to hypernationalist, racist, and militaristic tendencies constitutive of the myth of greatness that is attainable for few, yet generates mass enthusiasm in the many as well.” 

Today we’re here to discuss the phenomenon of (new) fascism, what collision of narcissism and the madness of crowds brought us to this moment, and where we’re heading in the wake of an oppressive global pandemic. I’m excited to be joined for this discussion by Nidesh Lawtoo, who is Professor of English and Philosophy at KU Leuven in Belgium. Dr. Lawtoo received his PhD in Comparative Literature & Critical Theory from the University of Washington and his areas of specialization include modernism, postcolonial literature, film studies and Continental Philosophy with special focus on the theories of mimesis, imitation, and simulation. (New) Fascism: Contagion, Community, Myth is his most recent book with MSU Press, and it was published in our Breakthroughs in Mimetic Theory Series.

(New) Fascism Contagion, Community, Myth, is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. As Dr. Lawtoo stated, the book is part of a larger project funded by the European Research Council titled Homo Mimeticus. You can learn more about that project at homomimeticus.eu, @hom_project on twitter, and on facebook at homprojecterc, and Professor Lawtoo is on twitter @nidesh.lawtoo. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to Daniel Trego, Madiha Ghous, Donté Smith, Kylene Cave, and the team at MSU Press, especially Elise Jajuga and Julie Reaume, for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

Toward the Wild Abundance received the Wheelbarrow Books Prize for Poetry from Center for Poetry at the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities here at MSU in 2018. In her introduction to the volume, the contest’s judge, Sarah Bagby, says the book “conjures emotions initiated by the frailty and wonder of our lives. ... These kaleidoscopic poems also shine brilliance on themes of memory and the passage of time. They fluidly transport us from past to present and into the imagination to pose questions about how our experiences inform identity and meaning.” The book is full of light, paintings, flowers, and quiet moments of reflection. In the words of Jack Ridl, Toward the Wild Abundance is an “elegantly down-to-earth collection” that “longs for lives where we love wastefully and stand in awe.” 

Kristin Brace writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks Fence, Patio, Blessed Virgin and Each Darkness Inside. Brace earned an MFA in writing from Spalding University and her work has appeared in journals such as Fiction Southeast, Water-Stone Review, and The Other Journal.

Toward the Wild Abundance, is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can find her at kristinbrace.com. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on twitter, where you can also find our host @kurtmilb.