New Books in Higher Education

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On May 13, 2026, Princeton’s Center for Human Values hosted a day-long conference titled Audio & Ideas: Exploring the Possibilities for Scholarly Podcasting. It was co-sponsored by Princeton’s Journalism program, and the NYU Podcast Initiative. Over the course of four panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research.

In the second panel, Chenjerai Kumanyika led a discussion about the aesthetics of podcasting. Professor Kumanyika is an assistant professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, who specializes in using narrative non-fiction audio journalism to critique the ideology of American historical myths about issues such as race, the Civil War, and policing. His podcast Empire City, was chosen by the New York Times as one of the best podcasts of 2024. He was the co-creator, co-executive producer and co-host of Uncivil, a podcast on the Civil War, and he is the collaborator for Scene on Radio’s Season 2 “Seeing White,” and Season 4 on the history of American democracy. His current podcast is Unruly Subjects. The panel included Vinson Cunningham, a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he has written about theatre and television. He is a Spring 2026 McGraw Professor of Writing in the Program in Journalism at Princeton University. He is the author of the novel, Great Expectations; Julia Barton is an award-winning podcast, audiobook, and radio editor. She was the executive editor of Pushkin Industries, where she helped develop Revisionist History and Against the Rules. She’s the editor of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bomber Mafia, Michael Specter’s Fauci, and Michael Lewis’s unabridged Liar’s Poker and companion podcast. Her 2019 series, Spacebridge, was called “dazzling” by The New Yorker. She writes the audio history newsletter, Continuous Wave.

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This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On May 13, 2026, Princeton’s Center for Human Values hosted a day-long conference titled Audio & Ideas: Exploring the Possibilities for Scholarly Podcasting. It was co-sponsored by Princeton’s Journalism program, and the NYU Podcast Initiative. Over the course of four panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research.

In the first panel, podcaster Benjamen Walker discusses Tuning Time, a podcast about the politics of time stretching technology, with NYU media and disability studies professor Mara Mills. Professor Mills teaches in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and is Director of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. Her work on “disability and media” spans disability arts and technoscience, with a focus on the history, politics, and cultures of electronics and digital media. Benjamen Walker is one of the co-founders of the podcast network Radiotopa from PRX, and for a decade hosted and produced his award winning program Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything.

The panel continues with a presentation by NYU musicologist Fanny Gribenski in which she discusses her current project, The Elephant in the Piano: Music, Ecology, Empire. The book, and podcast, is an investigation of the 19th century piano through a material history of its primary components: ivory, wood, felt, and metal. Professor Gribenski is a historical musicologist who specializes in the history of musical and sonic practices. Her first book, L'Église comme lieu de concert. Pratiques musicales et usages de l'espace (Paris, 1830–1905) analyzes the role of music in the production of sacred spaces. Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859-1955 (University of Chicago, 2023) traces the rocky path towards international pitch standardization.

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What does doctoral supervision actually look like in contemporary academia?

In this NBN episode, Fredrik Saxegaard discusses the open-access book Doctoral Supervision Across Boundaries: Interdisciplinarity as Process and Practice (Scandinavian UP, 2026), co-edited with Mia Lövheim, and Geir Afdal.

The conversation challenges the traditional image of supervision as a private relationship between a supervisor and a PhD candidate. Instead, the book argues that supervision today is distributed across networks, institutions, peers, reviewers, research schools, and academic cultures.

We discuss:

Drawing on experiences from the Scandinavian RVS research school, the book offers a critical rethinking of supervision as a relational, collective, and institutionally embedded practice.

This episode will be particularly relevant to supervisors, doctoral candidates, academic developers, and anyone interested in the future of higher education.

Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands.

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In this episode of the New Books Network, I spoke with Dr Olga Burlyuk and Dr Ladan Rahbari about their new edited volume, From the Margins: Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity (Open Book Publishers, 2026). The book is open access.

As universities promote internationalisation while maintaining labour systems that leave many migrant scholars vulnerable, this volume builds on the editors’ 2023 collection (also featured on New Books Network) by incorporating global perspectives. Through personal and autoethnographic narratives, contributors examine visa insecurity, institutional exclusion, racialisation, loneliness, and overwork, while also highlighting joy, solidarity, and “resilience”.

By treating lived experience as critical knowledge, From the Margins offers a strong critique of contemporary academia and invites readers to consider whom universities serve, whose labour sustains them, and what a more equitable academic future could look like.

Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Religion and Theology within the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research examines the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, particularly within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands.

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Wide ranging interview with Dr. Ronald L. Jackson II, Professor and Department Chair of Communication Studies, the University of Miami. Interview explores Dr. Jackson's pioneering scholarship in Black Masculinist Thought, its contribution to Black Studies, its intercultural conversations with Black Feminist Thought, the State of Black Men's Studies and its relationship to Black Women's Studies, its interface with the public spheres of Manosphere and Womanosphere, as well as the future of Black Masculinist Thought Scholarship and Black Gender Studies.

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In Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in a New Era (Harvard Education Press, 2026), Julie J. Park offers deft analysis of the changes to college admissions and campus life since the US Supreme Court ruled to restrict race-conscious policies in two 2023 cases: Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Park offers clear explanations of the rulings, their historical context, and their implications for higher education policy. She highlights how the Supreme Court still allows campuses to consider the role of race in students' experiences and that numerous tools to advance diversity in admissions remain. In this lively, timely work, Park points out the swift and stark post-ruling shifts in campus demographics and grapples with questions of how to push toward a more equitable admissions system. She investigates alternative initiatives, such as test-optional and test-free admissions, percent plans, and others, weighing their merits and drawbacks. She also examines inequality affecting college applications themselves and offers ideas for reform. Integrating up-to-the minute research on admissions, standardized testing, enrollment management, and the campus racial climate, Park recommends actions that can advance equity-oriented access to higher education despite the current restrictions on race-conscious admissions. Park ends with a call to campus leaders, policymakers, and practitioners to reimagine selective college admissions and attendance and offers a glimpse of what the future could hold.

Julie J. Park is a professor in the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. An expert on race and diversity in higher education, she served as a consulting expert in the landmark case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard on the side of Harvard.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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In my recent conversation with Sittig, we explored her co-authored book Intellectual Self-Destruction: How the West Gambles Away Its Future (Ibidem Press, 2025), written with Noam Pitri and distributed by Columbia University Press. Drawing from her experiences as a German journalist and former student at Columbia University, Sittig offers a deeply personal and rigorously documented account of what she describes as a growing “anti-Western coalition” within academic spaces across the United States and Europe.

At the heart of the book is a provocative thesis: that the West’s greatest threat may not come from external adversaries, but from an internal intellectual shift—one that prioritizes ideological certainty over open inquiry, and moral posturing over evidence-based reasoning. Sittig and Pitri trace this pattern across campuses, where unlikely alliances have formed between strands of “woke” theory and political Islam. While these movements differ philosophically, Sittig argues that they converge tactically in their shared suspicion of Western liberal values and their embrace of absolutist moral frameworks.

Our discussion brought these ideas into sharp focus through Sittig’s own experiences. As a student, she encountered resistance—and at times hostility—when attempting to research topics such as Islamism and terrorism in Europe. What should have been a space for intellectual exploration instead became, in her telling, a site of constraint. This tension between inquiry and ideology echoes one of the book’s central historical parallels: the case of Trofim Lysenko in the Soviet Union, where political dogma overrode scientific truth with devastating consequences.

Sittig also details the evolving dynamics of campus activism, particularly in the aftermath of October 7th. She points to organized student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and examines their funding structures and messaging strategies. Of particular concern, she notes, are instances of social media activity and organizing efforts that appeared to anticipate or justify acts of violence, raising urgent questions about the boundaries between activism and endorsement.

Yet the book is not only a critique—it is also a warning grounded in historical consciousness. Referencing moments such as the intellectual climate surrounding Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Sittig suggests that the current moment reflects a longer trajectory in which academic culture has increasingly struggled to balance respect for cultural difference with a commitment to universal principles like free speech.

Despite the book’s ambition to reach a wide and ideologically diverse audience, Sittig shared that its reception has largely mirrored existing divides. Readers already aligned with its arguments have embraced it, while critics have remained unconvinced. The elusive “middle ground,” it seems, remains difficult to access—perhaps itself a reflection of the polarization the book seeks to diagnose.

And yet, there is a note of cautious optimism. The very fact that Intellectual Self-Destruction was published and distributed through major academic channels suggests that spaces for dissenting perspectives still exist, even if they are contested.

As educators, scholars, and engaged citizens, we are left with a pressing challenge: how do we cultivate environments that encourage rigorous debate without collapsing into ideological conformity? Sittig’s work does not offer easy answers, but it insists that the question cannot be ignored.

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Campus Whisper Networks: Knowing with Sexual Assault Survivors (Rutgers University Press, 2026) examines how personal knowledge about

Dr. Shope and Dr. Pringle highlight the structural properties that prohibit

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book

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A guide for today’s classrooms, this collection from leading Joyce scholars explores innovative pedagogical approaches to the works of this often-challenging writer

Teaching James Joyce in the Twenty-First Century (UP of Florida, 2025) presents examples of bold, innovative pedagogical techniques instructors have used to adapt the study of Joyce’s work for the contemporary classroom. Leading Joyce scholars share approaches that go beyond the traditional university lecture hall to include experiences teaching high school students, senior citizens, art students, book club members, and people in prisons.

The strategies in this inspirational volume range from class discussions to creating art and music to walking city streets. Works examined include the complex Finnegans Wake and the influential modernist milestones Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. While Joyce is often viewed as an essential and foundational author of Irish literature, contributors to this volume argue that the spirit of Joyce’s writing is global, and they offer suggestions for teaching these works in an international context.

Students are often daunted by the perceived difficulty and inaccessibility of Joyce, but this volume helps both new and experienced teachers of Joyce make the writer’s texts understandable, relatable, and even fun. These authors argue that reading Joyce helps develop skills in holding and interrogating opposing ideas, skills that are essential in navigating the modern academic and political landscape. In grappling with Joyce, students will recognize his writing as relevant and urgent.

Barry Devine is associate professor of English at Heidelberg University. Ellen Scheible is professor of English at Bridgewater State University. Scheible is the author or editor of many books, including Body Politics in Contemporary Irish Women’s Fiction: The Literary Legacy of Mother Ireland.

Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network.

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Why do we build our sense of self around our academic work? What does it mean to pivot away from campus jobs to the alt-ac world? How does increasing academic fragility affect our opportunities both on campus and after graduation? In this episode we explore how the precarity of the academic job market changes our career trajectories, and the new paths we forge.

Guest: Dr. Fidan Cheikosman is the author of The End of an Academic Dream. She has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Edinburgh. She is a neuroscience editor with Springer Nature.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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