Online Lectures, Podcasts, and Research Presentations
"The Epidemic of Racism (with DeRay Mckesson)," In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt. Andy talks to DeRay Mckesson about another epidemic sweeping the country — violence by the police against Black people. They talk data and policy solutions, and DeRay provides a personal and comprehensive view of what’s been going on across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the Minneapolis police. Then Andy calls disability activist Sinéad Burke in Ireland to provide a global perspective on militarized police and what we can learn about disability and accessibility in a pandemic.
“The world’s scariest economist” on coronavirus, innovation, and purpose." The Ezra Klein Show. The author of The Entrepreneurial State and The Value of Everything , Mariana Mazzucato, offers a critique of some of the most fundamental economic assumptions of our time, as well as describes an alternative path forward.
Wisconsin's Green Fire conservation webinars: Wisconsin conservation leaders discuss how social, political, and economic changes driven by a global pandemic may affect our efforts to address climate change, clean water, and other conservation issues.
Podcasts on climate change produced by Cultural Studies PhD program at George Mason University.
Episode 1: "Climate Science Denial and Information Inoculation" with John Cook
Episode 2: "Petrocultures and the Energy Humanities" with Imre Szeman
Episode 3: "Toxic Risk, Corporate Negligence, Public Reckoning" with Merlin Chowkwanyun
Episode 4: "Cheap Nature, or, the Cultural Logic of Historical Capitalism" with Jason W. Moore
Episode 5: "Greenwashing Culture" with Toby Miller
Episode 6: "Planning the Good Anthropocene" with Leigh Phillips
Episode 7: "The Storm State: The Political Economy of Government in the Age of Climate Crisis"
with Christian Parenti
Episode 8: "Just Urban Futures" with Ashley Dawson
Episode 9: "Everything is Connected" with Sheila Watt-Cloutier
"Feral" - the forms of nature and the non-human that are considered 'out-of-place’: Research presentations from the 2018 online conference at the Massey University Political Ecology Research Center.
“Plastics and Plastic Wastes": Research presentations from the 2017 online conference at the Massey University Political Ecology Research Center.
“Everybody Was Kung Fu Citing": An entertaining lecture by Paul Bowman, Professor of Cultural Studies and specialist on martial arts and culture at Cardiff University, on Carl Douglas’ disco classic “Kung Fu Fighting.” Using numerous iterations of the popular video, Bowman analyzes the changing images, text, music, and contexts that raise questions of cultural appropriation, orientalism, and racism. Watch and listen to this video to learn how to think about the significance of even the most “ordinary” popular cultural forms.
Coronavirus-related Content
Our Pandemic Summer by Ed Yong. The Atlantic, April 14, 2020. What lies ahead as we work through the coronavirus pandemic? This thoughtful article addresses the difficult policy and personal choices that lie ahead, all of which have ramifications for health and well-being, institutions and businesses, the economy, and relations of inequality.
A collection of biopolitically inspired essays examining various aspects of the COVID-19 outbreak, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.
An Unfinished Lesson: What the 1918 Flu Tells Us About Human Nature. The podcast, Hidden Brain, provides a compelling historical perspective of the 1918 flu with direct implications for today's coronavirus pandemic. Not only does a virus of this nature have immediate health consequences but it also has long-lasting implications for societies, communities and geopolitics. Historian Nancy Bristow, author of American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, gives critical insight into this unique moment.
The Coronavirus Syllabus (requires a simple and free online subscription). This site provides many links to “serious readings on the global repercussions of COVID-19,” links to articles and podcasts on its “political, economic, and social impacts.” In explaining their method for locating these resources they write, “We’ve trained our curation system, which rests on a mix of algorithmic and human curation, on the coronavirus crisis. Like with our 60+ regular topics, our approach allows us to track and flag the best new content while filtering out the rubbish.”
“Coronavirus and the Underserved: We are Not all in this Together,” by Lisa Fitzpatrick. Infectious diseases physician and epidemiologist Lisa Fitzpatrick highlights the unique consequences of coronavirus for underserved communities and populations.