Shows / In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Interviews with Oxford University Press authors about their books
Episodes
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Andrew Koppelman, “The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform” (Oxford UP, 2013)
Every hundred years or so, the Supreme Court decides a question with truly vast economic implications. In 2012 such a decision was handed down, in a case that…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Eric Hayot, “On Literary Worlds” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Eric Hayot‘s new book is a bold, ambitious, and inspiring call for revising the way we think about, practice, and teach literary history. Pt. I of On Literary…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Cheryl Misak, “The American Pragmatists” (Oxford UP, 2013)
Pragmatism is American’s home-grown philosophy, but it is not widely understood. This partly is due to the fact that pragmatism emerged out of deep…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Sarah Reckhow, “Follow the Money: How Foundation Dollars Change Public School Politics” (Oxford UP, 2013)
Sarah Reckhow is the author of Follow the Money: How Foundation Dollars Change Public School Politics (Oxford University Press 2013). Reckhow is an Assistant…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Catherine Tackley, “Benny Goodman’s Famous 1939 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Feed: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Comic: “Practice!” When I first began to build a jazz record library back in the early 1960s, one particular album stood…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Jesse J. Prinz, “The Conscious Brain: How Attention Engenders Experience” (Oxford UP, 2012)
For decades now, philosophers, linguists, psychologists and neuroscientists have been working to understand the nature of the hard-to-describe but very…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Elly van Gelderen, “The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty” (Oxford UP, 2011)
In language, as in life, history is constantly repeating itself. In her book The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty (Oxford University…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Willem J. M. Levelt, “A History of Psycholinguistics: The Pre-Chomskyan Era” (Oxford UP, 2012)
The only disappointment with A History of Psycholinguistics: The Pre-Chomskyan Era (Oxford UP, 2012) is that, as the subtitle says, the story it tells stops at…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Donald Bloxham, “The Final Solution: A Genocide” (Oxford UP, 2009)
The end of the Cold War dramatically changed research into the Holocaust. The gradual opening up of archives across Eastern Europe allowed a flood of local and…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Sara Dubow, “Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America” (Oxford UP, 2010)
This year is the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion nationwide. Indeed, 40 years ago today, women…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Michael Gibbs Hill, “Lin Shu, Inc.: Translation and the Making of Modern Chinese Culture” (Oxford UP, 2013)
What do “Rip van Winkle,” Oliver Twist, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Aesop’s Fables have in common? All of them were translated into Chinese by Lin Shu (Lin Qinnan…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Gil Troy, “Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism” (Oxford UP, 2012)
The 1970s and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict are quite possibly the two most depressing subjects an academic could study. With shag carpeting, disco…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Herman Cappelen, “Philosophy Without Intuitions” (Oxford UP, 2012)
It’s taken for granted among analytic philosophers that some of their primary areas of inquiry – ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
James R. Hurford, “The Origins of Grammar (Language in the Light of Evolution, Vol. 2)” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Building upon The Origins of Meaning (see previous interview), James R. Hurford‘s The Origins of Grammar (Language in the Light of Evolution, Vol. 2) (Oxford…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Mary Fulbrook, “A Small Near Town Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust” (Oxford UP, 2012)
The question of how “ordinary Germans” managed to commit genocide is a classic (and troubling) one in modern historiography. It’s been well studied and so it’s…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
James R. Hurford, “The Origins of Meaning (Language in Light of Evolution, Vol. 1)” (Oxford UP, 2007)
Evolutionary approaches to linguistics have notoriously had a rather chequered history, being associated with vague and unfalsifiable claims about the…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Peter Trudgill, “Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity” (Oxford UP, 2011)
If you had to bet your life on learning a language in three months, which language would you choose? Peter Trudgill’s first choice wouldn’t be Faroese or…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Christopher Bush, “Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media” (Oxford UP, 2010)
Orientalism, the ideograph, and media theory grew up together. In Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media (Oxford University Press, 2010), Christopher…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Anthony Bale, “The Book of Marvels and Travels” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Anthony Bale‘s new translation of Sir John Mandeville’s classic account is an exciting and engaging text that’s accessible to a wide range of readers. The Book…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Catherine Jami, “The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority During the Kangxi Reign (1662-1722)” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Challenging conventional modes of understanding China and the circulation of knowledge within the history of science, Catherine Jami‘s new book looks closely…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb, “Religion and AIDS in Africa” (Oxford UP, 2012)
The liberal media in the Western World takes a firm line on how two of the big issues facing Africa intersect – bluntly speaking Africa’s high levels of…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Joshua Miller, “Accented America: The Cultural Politics of Multilingual Modernism” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Recent political debates around language have often been controversial, sometimes poorly informed, and usually unedifying. It’s striking to consider that such…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Samuel Morris Brown, “In Heaven as it is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Every person must confront death; the only question is how that person will do it. In our culture (I speak as an American here), we don’t really do a very good…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Daniel Kreiss, “Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Daniel Kreiss is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His Taking Our…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Par Cassel, “Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Extraterritoriality was not grafted whole onto East Asian societies: it developed over time and in a relationship with local precedents, institutions, and…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Janet Kourany, “Philosophy of Science After Feminism” (Oxford UP, 2010)
Do social values belong in the sciences? Exploring the relationship between science, society, and politics, Philosophy of Science After Feminism (Oxford UP…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Paul Weithman, “Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn” (Oxford UP, 2010)
It is difficult to overstate the importance of John Rawls to political and moral philosophy. Yet Rawls’s work is commonly read as fundamentally divided between…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Paul Gutjahr, “Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy” (Oxford UP, 2011)
When I was in Seminary I was assigned many theological tomes to read and one was especially difficult to get through. It was Systematic Theology by Charles…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
David Karpf, “The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy” (Oxford UP, 2012)
David Karpf is the author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy (Oxford University Press 2012) and an assistant…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Anthony Laden, “Reasoning: A Social Picture” (Oxford UP, 2012)
According to a view familiar to philosophers, reasoning is a process that occurs within an individual mind and is aimed specifically at demonstrating on the…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Mark Haas, “The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security” (Oxford UP, 2012)
How do ideologies shape foreign policy? That is question Dr. Mark Haas examines in his new book The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
P. Kyle Stanford, “Exceeding Our Grasp: Science, History, and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives” (Oxford UP, 2006)
Should we really believe what our best scientific theories tell us about the world, especially about parts of the world that we can’t see? This question…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Helen Steward, “A Metaphysics for Freedom” (Oxford UP, 2012)
The basic problem of free will is quite simple to pose: do we ever act freely? One of the traditional “no” answers comes from the idea that we live in a…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Kok-Chor Tan, “Justice, Institutions, and Luck: The Site, Ground, and Scope of Equality” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Justice requires that each person gets what he or she deserves. Luck is a matter of good or bad things simply befalling people; hence luck distributes to…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Gregory A. Daddis, “No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Ask any student or aficionado of the Vietnam War (1965-1972) for a top ten list of artifacts “unique” to the war, and chances are the phenomenon of “body…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Trevor Getz and Liz Clarke, “Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Imagine this: a young African girl, barefoot but wearing a dress and head wrap, clenches her fists and looks you in the eye. Behind her a semi-circle of men…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Elizabeth Brake, “Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law” (Oxford UP, 2012)
From the time we are children, we are encouraged to see our lives as in large measure aimed at finding a spouse. In popular media, the unmarried adult is seen…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Susan Harris, “God’s Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Mark Twain called it “pious hypocrisies.” President McKinley called it “civilizing and Christianizing.” Both were referring to the U.S. annexation of the…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Kevin Whitehead, “Why Jazz? A Concise Guide” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Kevin Whitehead‘s highly readable, informative and entertaining Why Jazz? A Concise Guide (Oxford University Press, 2011) is bookshelf “must have” for anyone…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Christopher Mole, “Attention is Cognitive Unison: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Chris Mole‘s book, Attention is Cognitive Unison: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology (Oxford University Press, 2011) provides a wonderfully elegant answer to…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Peter Robb, “Richard Blechynden’s Calcutta Diaries, 1791-1822” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Richard Blechynden came to Calcutta in 1782 as a twenty two year old, and stayed there for the rest of his life, working as a surveyor and architect. From 1791…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Tore Janson, “The History of Languages: An Introduction” (Oxford UP, 2012)
It’s a sobering thought that, but for the spread of English, I wouldn’t be able to do these interviews. In particular, I don’t speak Swedish, and I’m not going…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Geoff Dean et al., “Organized Crime: Policing Illegal Business Entrepreneurialism” (Oxford UP, 2010)
This week we have Geoff Dean on the show to talk about his new book Organised Crime: Policing Illegal Business Entrepreneurialism (Oxford University Press…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
David Edgerton, “Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War” (Oxford UP, 2011)
My grandfather joined up when the Second World War broke out, but he was soon returned to civvy street as he was much more valuable employing his mechanic’s…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Jeanne Fahnestock, “Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion” (Oxford UP, 2011)
A thing I enjoy about this job is being encouraged to read books that unexpectedly turn out to be profoundly relevant to my own interests. Jeanne Fahnestock‘s…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Uriah Kriegel, “The Sources of Intentionality” (Oxford UP, 2011)
It’s standard in philosophy of mind to distinguish between two basic kinds of mental phenomena: intentional states, which are about or represent other items or…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Nabil Matar and Gerald MacLean, “Britain and the Islamic World, 1558-1713” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Nineteenth-century observers would say that the British Empire was an Islamic one; be that as it may, before Empire there was trade- and lots of it. Nabil…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Allen Buchanan, “Better than Human: The Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Popular culture is replete with warnings about the dangers of technology. One finds in recent films, literature, and music cautions about the myriad ways in…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Gerald Steinacher, “Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice” (Oxford UP, 2011)
When I was a kid I loved movies about Nazis who had escaped justice after the war. There was “The Marathon Man” (“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going into that…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Kariann Akemi Yokota, “Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation” (Oxford UP, 2011)
The founding fathers–and mothers, sons and daughters–were British. Sort of. It’s true that they were subjects of the British crown, and that they looked…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Frank Wcislo, “Tales of Imperial Russia: The Life and Times of Sergei Witte, 1849-1915” (Oxford UP, 2011)
When it comes to Russia’s great reformers of the nineteenth century, Count Sergei Witte looms large. As a minster to both Alexander III and Nicholas II, Witte…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Robert Audi, “Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State” (Oxford UP, 2011)
In a liberal democratic society, individuals share political power as equals. Consequently, liberal democratic governments must recognize each citizen as a…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Philip Stern, “The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India” (Oxford UP, 2011)
‘Traders to rulers’ is an enduring caption insofar as the English East India Company is concerned. But were they ever just traders to start off with, and they…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Alexander Morrison, “Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India” (Oxford UP, 2008)
Great Britain and Russia faced off across the Pamirs for much of the nineteenth century; their rivalries and animosities often obscuring underlying…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Peter Ludlow, “The Philosophy of Generative Linguistics” (Oxford UP, 2011)
The human capacity for language is always cited as the or one of the cognitive capacities we have that separates us from non-human animals. And linguistics, at…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Gale Stokes, “The Walls Came Tumbling Down” (2nd Edition, Oxford UP, 2011)
Europe may currently be in crisis and riven with divisions, but at least it’s a Europe of independent states. It was not always so. The Soviets dominated…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Patricia Campbell, “Knowing Body, Moving Mind: Ritualizing and Learning at Two Buddhist Centers” (Oxford UP, 2011)
There is a lot of ritual involved in Buddhist practice. As more and more North Americans are discovering Buddhism, they are engaging in more and more Buddhist…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
David Potter, “The Victor’s Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium” (Oxford UP, 2011)
The Victor’s Crown brings to vivid life the signal role of sport in the classical world. Ranging over a dozen centuries–from Archaic Greece through to the late…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Edith Sheffer, “Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain” (Oxford UP, 2011)
If Edith Sheffer‘s excellent Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (Oxford UP, 2011) has a single lesson, it’s that dividing a country…
- In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Vera Tolz, “Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Everyone knows that the late nineteenth-century Russian Empire was the largest land based empire around, and that it was growing yet- at fifty-five square…