In the 1960s, artists, writers, and activists prefigured the wider discourse around automation and made it a central concern of their politics. Drawing upon James and Grace Lee Boggs’s notion of the cybercultural era, and examining the works of Martin Luther King Jr., Noah Purifoy, and the Black Panthers, Brian Bartell provides a crucial key to understanding the historical dynamics responsible for our technocapitalist, AI-driven present. Here, Bartell is joined in conversation with John Elrick.

Brian Bartell teaches courses on politics and aesthetics, media studies, and race and technology studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles and at the California Institute of Technology. Bartell is author of On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution: Black Power and Capitalism in the 1960s.

John Elrick is visiting assistant professor of geography at Vassar College.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

-From Counterculture to Cyberculture / Fred Turner

-“The Negro and Cybernation,” James Boggs, speech delivered at the First Annual Conference on the Cybercultural Revolution, 1964.

-Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution (AHC), The Triple Revolution (pamphlet), 1964.

-National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, Report Vol. 1: Technology and the American Economy, 1966

-Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century / Grace Lee Boggs

-Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth, 1972

-Ten Point Program, 1966 and 1972 (presented at Community Survival Conference, Oakland, CA); particularly, “People’s Community Control of Modern Technology” and Huey P. Newton’s “The Technology Question” within.

-The Chosen Place, the Timeless People / Paule Marshall

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
"Incisive, original, and beautifully written, On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution exposes the interconnections between race, technology, and capitalism. Brian Bartell shows that the cybercultural revolution was central to the Black Power movement as it opened up avenues for envisioning freedom from the conditions of reproduction and labor under racial capitalism."
—Neda Atanasoski

"Highly relevant to the present moment, On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution presents a vital argument about the Black Power movement’s insights into the relationship between capitalism, technology, and racism. In so doing, Brian Bartell makes a fascinatingly original contribution to conversations about the role of automation in the ‘technocapitalist present.’"
—Jonathan Flatley

On the Eve of the Cybercultural Revolution: Black Power and Capitalism in the 1960s by Brian Bartell is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

Far from being unrealistic, abolition is an indispensable part of a realist politics. In the book Prison Abolition for Realists, Anna Terwiel examines the work of abolitionist thinkers and activists since the 1960s—Michel Foucault, Liat Ben-Moshe, Angela Y. Davis, and more—to argue that prison abolition is a realist political project. Terwiel is joined here in conversation with Kirstine Taylor. This conversation took place in late 2025.

Anna Terwiel is assistant professor of political science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and codirector of Trinity’s Prison Education Project. Terwiel is author of Prison Abolition for Realists.

Kirstine Taylor is associate professor of political science and the Center for Law, Justice & Culture at Ohio University. Taylor is author of Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Foucault / Discipline and Punish

Prison Information Group

Prison+Neighborhood Arts/Education Project

Nils Christie

Louk Hulsman

Angela Davis

Liat Ben-Moshe / Decarcerating Disability

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Thomas Mathiesen

W. E. B. Du Bois

Mariame Kaba

Erin R. Pineda / Seeing Like an Activist

Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA)

Praise for the book:

“Both clearly written and timely in its subject matter, Prison Abolition for Realists offers a cogent way of thinking about abolition. Anna Terwiel intervenes in the debate over whether abolition is utopian in its aims and excellently frames her argument in the tradition of political realism.”

—Ali Aslam, coauthor of Earthborn Democracy: A Political Theory of Entangled Life

Prison Abolition for Realists by Anna Terwiel is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

During the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Helen Hoover’s stories and essays of life in the wilderness on northern Minnesota’s Gunflint Lake, published in popular magazines and several bestselling books (including The Gift of the Deer in 1966 and A Place in the Woods in 1969), found millions of fans and earned her accolades alongside nature writers like Sigurd Olson, Rachel Carson, Sally Carrighar, and Calvin Rutstrum. Hoover’s own unlikely history of leaving a corporate career in Chicago for a small cabin without electricity or running water is just one chapter of the remarkable life that David Hakensen describes in Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover. This first complete biography illuminates how Helen Hoover (1910–1984) made a place for herself and for countless readers in, as she put it, the world of her time. On October 20, 2025, Hakensen was joined in conversation with Annette Atkins at the Minnesota Historical Society. This is the full audio of their conversation.

David Hakensen is an award-winning public relations executive with more than forty years of experience. He has served on several nonprofit boards and was president of the executive council of the Minnesota Historical Society from 2018-2023.

Annette Atkins is a scholar, teacher, public historian, and professor emerita at Saint John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Collegeville, Minnesota. Atkins is author of Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out.

Praise for the book:

"None of it was easy. None of it was a straight line. Much was laced with human paradox and contradiction and courage. David tells Helen’s remarkable story with grace and understanding, helping readers to discover the real woman behind the myth and why her place in the woods is still the stuff of dreams."
—Douglas Wood, author of A Wild Path

"A compelling portrait of an uncompromising artist. It is an excellent companion to her works and will surely assist a long-overdue Helen Hoover revival."
—Ann McCutchan, author of The Life She Wished to Live

Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover is available from University of Minnesota Press.
Thank you for listening.

At age 60, Erica Rand decided to take up pairs figure skating. As two white queer adult skaters, Rand and her partner have come into direct contact with the interconnected binarisms that shape athletic participation, from oversimplified distinctions between cis and trans to the artificial division between athletic and artistic. Rand’s book Skating Away from the Binary is a call to transform gender norms in sport. Here, Rand is joined in conversation with Travers and Mary Louis Adams. This conversation was recorded in December 2025.

Erica Rand is professor of art and visual culture and of gender and sexuality studies at Bates College. She is author of several books, including Skating Away from the Binary ; Barbie’s Queer Accessories; The Ellis Island Snow Globe; Red Nails Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the Ice; and The Small Book of Hip Checks On Queer Gender, Race, and Writing. She has served on the editorial boards of Radical Teacher and Salacious and co-edits the series Writing Matters! for Duke University Press. In a piece for Global Sports Matters called “Skating Out of the Binary” and in “At the Ice Rink, My Feet End in Knives,” she describes training in a gender non-conforming adult figure skating pairs team, with pairs partner Anna Kellar of the Future of Figure Skating podcast, as they participate in growing efforts to expand inclusion in the sport—a sport mired in racialized heteronormativity that is also being transformed through critically engaged practice and institutional change.

Mary Louise Adams is a retired professor from the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Adams is author of Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity and the Limits of Sport and The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality.

Travers is a professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University. They are author of The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) are Creating a Gender Revolution; Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sports; and Writing the Public in Cyberspace: Redefining Inclusion on the Net.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Podcast, Anna Kellar, The Future of Figure Skating

Danya Lagos, American Journal of Sociology: “Has There Been a Transgender Tipping Point?”

Eric A. Stanley, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Gender Self-Determination

Skating Away from the Binary by Erica Rand is available in the Forerunners series from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available at manifold.umn.edu. Thank you for listening.

Movidas are subtle yet strategic actions through which Latina/x artists forge solidarities, mobilize for justice, and reclaim space. In Place-Keepers, Jessica Lopez Lyman centers Latina/x women and gender nonconforming artists from Chicana/Mexicana, US Central American, and Caribbean backgrounds and examines how these artists respond to systemic oppression through public performances and behind-the-scenes negotiations with the state, nonprofits, and other institutions—establishing a crucial framework for understanding art as activism. Here, Lopez Lyman is joined in conversation with Kristie Soares and Karma Chaves. Access a transcript: https://share.transistor.fm/s/97747e66

Jessica Lopez Lyman is an interdisciplinary performance artist and Xicana feminist scholar, assistant professor in the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of Minnesota, and author of Place-Keepers: Latina/x Art, Performance, and Organizing in the Twin Cities.

Kristie Soares is associate professor of Women & Gender Studies and Co-Director of LGBTQ Studies at University of Colorado Boulder. Soares is author of Playful Protest: The Political Work of Joy in Latinx Media.

Karma Chávez is Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and Chair of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Chavez is author of The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance; Palestine on the Air; and Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Laurie Carlos

María Isa Pérez-Vega

Stephanie Lee Batiste

Methodology of the Oppressed / Chela Sandoval

FEATURED ARTISTS in Place-Keepers:

Teresa Ortiz

Guadalupe Castillo (La Lupe)

Deborah Ramos

Adriana Rimpel (Lady Midnight)

María Isa Pérez-Vega

Lorena Duarte

Olivia Levins Holden

Magdalena Kaluza

Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra

Maria Cristina Tavera

NOTE: This podcast episode was recorded in December 2025. More recently, Jessica Lopez Lyman spoke with Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan on LitHub’s fiction/non/fiction podcast about the history of state violence in Minnesota.

Place-Keepers: Latina/x Art, Performance, and Organizing in the Twin Cities by Jessica Lopez Lyman is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

The work of Maria Janion, one of Eastern Europe’s most profound intellectuals, who witnessed the rise of authoritarian nationalism in Poland, German occupation during World War II, Soviet control, and Poland’s uneasy integration into the West, explores this fine line. Janion’s writings have been gathered by Marta Figlerowicz into the recently published volume The Bad Child: A Maria Janion Reader, and Figlerowicz is joined here in conversation with Noah Feldman to talk about Janion’s writing, which offers sharp insights into how societies develop and assert their identities and histories—often at the cost of the people. There are clear parallels here to current conditions and events. Please note that this episode was recorded in October 2025.

Maria Janion (1926–2020) was the greatest Polish leftist intellectual of her generation. The author of twenty-three books and hundreds of articles and essays, she mentored and inspired several generations of Eastern European scholars and political activists. During her life, Janion held appointments at several Polish academic institutions, including the University of Gdańsk and the Institute of Literary Studies in Warsaw.

Marta Figlerowicz is professor of comparative literature at Yale University. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and author of Flat Protagonists and Spaces of Feeling as well as more than a hundred articles, reviews, and essays. Her translations from Polish have appeared in PMLA and The Paris Review.

Noah Feldman is the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University. Feldman is author of ten books, including To Be a Jew Today, and host of the podcast Deep Background with Noah Feldman.

Episode references:
Adam Mickiewicz

Olga Tokarczuk

Edward Said

Isaiah Berlin

Praise for the book:
“Maria Janion’s writing is foundational to so many currents of contemporary Central European thought—around nations and nationalism, gender and genre, everyday politics and the political writ large—that her invisibility in English has long struck those of us privileged to know her work as a tragedy, if not a crime. This book belongs on the shelf of every humanist.”

—Benjamin Paloff, author of Worlds Apart

“The remarkable creativity, energy, and erudition of Maria Janion shine forth in these essays.”

—Sianne Ngai, University of Chicago

The Bad Child: A Maria Janion Reader, edited by Marta Figlerowicz, available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among anti-mafia alliances in Campania, Sicily, and other parts of Italy, Christina Jerne explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal economies from proliferating. Jerne is joined in conversation with Deborah Puccio-Den and Trine Mygind Korsby.

Christina Jerne is associate professor in the Department of Scandinavian Studies and Experience Economy at Aarhus University, Denmark. Jerne is author of Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism and coeditor and translator of Against the Mafia: The Classic Italian Writings.

Deborah Puccio-Den is a political anthropologist and research professor at the National Center for Scientific Research and the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France. She is author of Mafiacraft: An Ethnography of Deadly Silence.

Trine Mygind Korsby is assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and currently a Marie Curie fellow at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY).

REFERENCES:

Mafiacraft: An Ethnography of Deadly Silence / Deborah Puccio-Den

Umberto Santino

Giovanni Falcone

Audre Lorde

J. K. Gibson-Graham

Bruno Latour

Jean Luc Nancy

Gabriel Tarde

Gilles Deleuze

Felix Guattari

Addiopizzo

Praise for the book:
"Placing human experience at the center of collective action, Opposition by Imitation presents radically new directions for thinking about social movements. Christina Jerne captures both the fragility and strength of the struggle against mafia economies, powerfully demonstrating how anti-mafia activism opens up space for non-mafia relationships and economies to flourish."
—Kevin McDonald, Middlesex University

Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism by Christina Jerne is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

Douglas Armato, the fifth director in the University of Minnesota Press's 100-year history, will soon retire after 27 years of leadership at the Press—following an almost-50-year career in book publishing. On the occasion of this milestone event, he unites several titans of university publishing in a tremendous conversation about change and comradeship, past progress and future speculation, and persistent through it all, an abiding passion for what is at the core of this work: books. Gathered with Armato are Lisa Bayer, director of University of Georgia Press; Greg Britton, editorial director at Johns Hopkins University Press; Jennifer Crewe, associate provost and director of Columbia University Press; and Dean Smith, director of Duke University Press; in a conversation moderated by Bill Germano, professor of English at Cooper Union.

More about Armato's acquisitions, collaborations, and retirement news: z.umn.edu/DA27.
More about the Press's 100-year history and influence: z.umn.edu/wordfactory100.
This is a University of Minnesota Press production. Thank you for listening.

Episode chapters:

• 02:30: What has scholarly publishing gained, and what has it lost, since we started in the business?
• 05:08: Side hustles to sustain the bottom line.
• 10:02: Are university presses and university libraries still close allies?
• 17:52: How is the outside world meant to understand what a university press does?
• 22:45: It's a job for hopeless romantics willing to fall in love with ideas (and not necessarily ones you even like).
• 28:40: Whither AI? How is the AI tsunami different from or similar to past massive paradigm changes for publishing, such as the Internet and e-books?
• 35:22: In a world of e-books, does a book need to go out of print? Should books go out of print?
• 41:00: What is the ideal role for scholarly publishers with regard to tenure decisions?
• 48:24: Memories and anecdotes about working with Doug Armato.