Thomas D. Beamish (Department of Sociology)

A “social script” is a term sociologists use to describe the way people take actions based on cultural understanding that fits a recognizable pattern without anyone having to tell them what to do. In his research, Beamish has identified a social script in the way that people have recently been responding to tragedies. These responses have been very uniform, regardless of the type of tragic event, its causes or who was hurt by it.

Joshua Clover (Department of English)

Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings is by Joshua Clover, English professor and award-winning poet. Clover theorizes the riot as the form of the coming insurrection in his new book. Examining uprisings in Baltimore, Ferguson, Oakland and other places he proposes that we are in an “age of riots” as the struggle of people versus state and capital has taken to the streets. From early wage demands to recent social justice campaigns pursued through occupations and blockades, Clover connects these protests to the upheavals of a sclerotic economy in a state of moral collapse.

Christoph Hanssmann (Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies)

Chris Hanssmann studies the politics of health, science and medicine, focusing on relationships between biomedicine and social movements.nCare Without Pathology is a transnational analysis of trans health. Published with University of Minnesota Press,  it examines how activists and care providers define the field and enact care as a public good. Hanssmann works collaboratively with researchers and activists in feminist, queer and trans feminist health and justice, and has published articles in Transgender Studies Quarterly, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and Social Science and Medicine.

Stephanie Mudge (Department of Sociology)

Leftism Reinvented analyzes the history of the Swedish and German Social Democrats, the British Labour Party, and the American Democratic Party. Tracing their shift away from promising protections for the poor and disenfranchised, the book raises new questions about the roles and responsibilities of left-leaning parties — and their experts — in politics today. The book develops a century-long comparative, historical, and biographically-sensitive analysis of the American Democrats, the German and Swedish Social Democrats, and the British Labour Party. 

Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli (Department of Cinema and Digital Media )

Digital Uncanny looks at a new kind of uncanny experience — how surveillance technologies, algorithms, feedback and data flows anticipate human gestures, emotions, actions and interactions.

Eric Rauchway (Department of History)

Arguably the greatest peaceable expression of common purpose in U.S. history, the New Deal altered Americans' relationship with politics, economics and one another in ways that continue to resonate today. Why the New Deal Matters  looks at how this legacy, both for good and ill, informs the current debates around governmental responses to crises. 

Erik Engstrom and Robert Huckfeldt (Department of Political Science)

In Race, Class, and Social Welfare: American Populism Since the New Deal examines the racial divisions that have fractured the potential for a unified progressive populist movement in the United States.

Kathryn S. Olmsted (Department of History) 

Olmsted re-examines the labor disputes in Depression-era California that led California's businessmen and media to create a new style of politics with corporate funding, intelligence gathering, professional campaign consultants and alliances between religious and economic conservatives.

Sasha Ambramsky (University Writing Program) 

Sasha Abramsky sets out to uncover what things frighten us most: from terrorist attacks to illegal immigrants to the Zika virus, and posits why our fears are in many cases misplaced; how this hysteria is often based on issues of race, segregation, class and inequality; and how we cannot let it define us.

Julie Sze (Department of American Studies) 

Julie Sze examines mobilizations and movements from protests at Standing Rock to activism in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The book looks at dispossession, deregulation, privatization and inequality with cautiously hopeful stories

New research finds that for the past 150 years, immigrants in the United States have had lower incarceration rates than the U.S.-born, and since the 1960s that gap has significantly grown.

Terrorist groups worldwide all have different backgrounds and histories, but what they share in common is how they use violence to achieve their goals. New research finds that government responses in the form of verbal threats might have unintended consequences.