Another year in the books

Truth commissions, COVID-19 and decolonization on several fronts: This year, McMaster scholars have published a number of important books on matters that shape and are shaped by world events.

If you’re looking for a book for a critical thinker, look no further than the titles below.  

Communication Studies and Media Arts 

Decolonising Media and Communication Studies Education in Sub-Saharan Africa  

Selina Mudavanhu, Shepherd Mpofu, Kezia Batisai (Routledge) 

The book provides insights on decolonising media and communication studies education from diverse African scholars at different stages of their careers. These academics, located on the continent and in the diaspora, share an interest in decolonising higher education broadly, and media and communication studies teaching and learning in particular.  

Trafficking in Anti-Blackness: Modern-Day Slavery, White Indemnity, and Racial Justice  

Lyndsey P. Beutin (Duke University Press) 

In Trafficking in Antiblackness Lyndsey P. Beutin analyzes how campaigns to end human trafficking — often described as “modern-day slavery” — invoke the memory of transatlantic slavery to support positions ultimately grounded in antiblackness. 

English and Cultural Studies 

Insurrections: Education in an Age of Counter-Revolutionary Politics  

Henry Giroux (Bloomsbury) 

Henry Giroux argues that insurrection has become a dominant motif for the USA and other countries torn between the promises and ideals of democracy and an emergent authoritarianism. Giroux makes an impassioned call for an insurrectional democracy that makes education central to politics and produces an anti-capitalist consciousness as the basis for developing a mass movement in defence of a radical democracy. 

History

Britain Since 1688: A Nation in the World, Second Edition  

Stephen Heathorn, Stephanie Barczewski, John Eglin, Michael Silvestri and Michelle Tusan (Routledge) 

Chronological in structure yet thematic in approach, the book guides the reader through major events in British history from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, offering extensive coverage of the British Empire and continuing through to recent events such as Britain’s exit from the European Union. 

Truth Commissions and State Building  

Bonny Ibhawoh, Jasper Abembia Ayelazuno and Sylvia Bawa (McGill-Queen’s University Press)  

Examining truth commissions as mechanisms for civic inclusion, identity formation, institutional reform, and nation (re)building in post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies, the book shifts attention towards institutional innovation in African countries, where approximately a third of all commissions have been established. 

“Uncool and Incorrect” in Chile: The Nixon Administration and the downfall of Salvador Allende  

Stephen M. Streeter (McFarland) 

The military coup that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 led to one of the most repressive military dictatorships in Latin American history. Although the coup’s full origin remains one of the great mysteries of the Cold War, most assume that powers in Washington were largely to blame, given the long history of U.S. interventionism in Latin America. Providing a comprehensive account of the Nixon administration’s efforts to undermine and unseat Allende, this book relies heavily on newly declassified records, addressing several crucial questions regarding U.S. involvement. 

Crisis and Contagion: Conversations on Capitalism and COVID-19  

Ian McKay, ed. (Between the Lines) 

Crisis and Contagion is a selection of fourteen interviews conducted by Ian McKay of the Wilson Institute at McMaster University, with topics ranging from capitalism’s organic crisis and the ways it has made this and future pandemics inevitable, to the long-term effects and likely historical legacy of a pandemic that has changed millions of lives–and, maybe, the trajectory of human civilization. 

Linguistics and Languages 

My Life in Propaganda: Language and Totalitarian Regimes  

Magda Stroínska (UpRoute Books) 

My Life in Propaganda is Magda Stroińska’s personal account of growing up with communist propaganda in Eastern Europe. She looks at the influence of her family history that contradicted what she was taught at school, the cognitive and emotional effects of compulsory school readings, socialist realist art and film, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America and their role in shaping her generation’s collective view of the world. 

Philosophy 

Living in Time: The Philosophy of Henri Bergson  

Barry Allen (Oxford University Press) 

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was once the most famous philosopher in the world, but his reputation waned in the latter half of the 20th century. Barry Allen here makes the case for Bergson as a great philosopher, one whose thought has much to contribute to contemporary philosophical questions. Living in Time presents chapters on each of Bergson’s four major works, explaining his theories of time, perception, memory, and panpsychic consciousness, his innovative concept of virtual existence, his objection to Darwin, his controversy with Einstein, his philosophy of creative evolution, and his social philosophy of closed and open society. 

Historiography and the Formation of Philosophical Canons 

Sandra Lapointe and Erich Reck (Routledge) 

This book presents a series of case studies and reflections on the historiographical assumptions, methods and approaches that shape the way in which philosophers construct their own past. Historiography and the Formation of Philosophical Canons will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in history of philosophy, meta-philosophy, philosophy of history, historiography, intellectual history and sociology of knowledge. 

School of the Arts 

Abolition is Love  

Syrus Marcus Ware, illustrated by Alannah Fricker (Penguin Random House Canada)  

What can abolition mean for a child? How can it help them dream a different future for their community? In Abolition is Love, Amelie learns about collective care, mutual aid, and abolitionist ideas as they help their parents get ready for the annual Prisoners’ Justice Day. This book explores possibilities for hope, and offers ideas for caring for each other and building communities rooted in social justice and safety for all people. 

Feltness: Research Creation, Socially Engaged Art, and Affective Pedagogies  

Stephanie Springgay (Duke University Press, 2022) 

Stephanie Springgay’s concept of feltness–which emerges from affect theory, queer and feminist theory, and feminist conceptions of more-than-human entanglements–is a set of intimate practices of creating art based on touch, affect, relationality, love, and responsibility. In this book, she explores how feltness is a radical pedagogy that can be practiced with diverse publics, including children, who are often left out of conversations about who can learn in radical ways. 

Sociology

Forbidden Intimacies: Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance  

Melanie Heath (Stanford University Press) 

In Forbidden Intimacies, Melanie Heath comparatively investigates the regulation of polygamy in the United States, Canada, France, and Mayotte. Drawing on a wealth of ethnographic and archival sources, Heath uncovers the ways in which intimacies framed as “other” and “offensive” serve to define the very limits of Western tolerance. 

Political Science 

Extractive Bargains, Natural Resources and the State-Society Nexus  

Nathan Andrews and Paul Bowles (Palgrave Macmillan Cham) 

This book is the first to focus on state-led ‘extractive bargains,’ designed to reach a social consensus on the extent of extractive activities, how they should be governed and their negative consequences mitigated. These state-led ‘bargains’ have taken a number of different forms and offer varying degrees of promise in meeting environmental and social concerns. 

Decolonizing African Studies Pedagogies: Knowledge Production, Epistemic Imperialism and Black Agency  

Nathan Andrews and Nene Ernest Khalema (Palgrave Macmillan Cham) 

Despite the long history of decolonization as a ‘third world’ political project, decolonization as an intellectual project has gained tremendous momentum in recent times, signalled by movements such as #RhodesMustFall, #BlackInTheIvory, and Why Is My Curricula So White among others. Assembling critical perspectives of scholars engaged in African Studies and other cognate disciplines on the continent and in the diaspora, the book elucidates and fuses ideas together to produce nuanced pedagogical advances in the service of students, academics, and educators.