Series
Public Thinker
In this interview series, public scholars talk about how they found their path and how they communicate to a wide audience.
Editors: B. R. Cohen & Ben Platt

-

“The Interdisciplinary Nature of Food Is Now Un-ignorable”: Alicia Kennedy on Food Writing, Food Security, and Food Justice
“Food writing can no longer just be ‘go to this restaurant’ or ‘explain this dish or cocktail.’”
-

“Courage or Foolhardiness”: Talking Aimé Césaire with Alex Gil
-

We Are the Authors of the Story of Citizenship: Daisy Hernández on America’s Myth
-

“Recover, Replant, Return”: Talking Nuclear History, Writing, and Food with Kate Brown
-

“To Wither in the Same Way We Shall”: Talking Archives, Diseases, and History with Edna Bonhomme
-
Public Thinker: A. Naomi Paik on a Future without Rights
What is specific to or even unique about the condition of “rightlessness,” to the …
-
Public Thinker: Frances Negrón-Muntaner on Puerto Rico, Art, and Decolonial Joy
Frances Negrón-Muntaner is an innovative and multimodal thinker and artist, and a professor … [none-for-homepage]
-
Public Thinker: Kevin Kruse on Why Recent History Is Still History
“Historian. Author/editor of White Flight; The New Suburban History; Spaces of …
-
Public Thinker: Leah Price on Books, Book Tech, and Book Tattoos
Readers today believe that they are living through unprecedented changes in how …
-
Public Thinker: Adolph Reed Jr. on Organizing, Race, and Bernie Sanders
Growing up in a family of politically engaged black intellectuals in the …
-
Public Thinker: Louis Moore on Athlete-Activists before and after Kaepernick
In late 2016, amid the furor over Colin Kaepernick’s on-field protests against police brutality and rampant … [none-for-homepage]
-
Public Thinker: Kim Phillips-Fein on Austerity and the Fall of New York
With New York City teetering on the brink of fiscal collapse at the end of 1975, Congress passed … [none-for-homepage]
-
Public Thinker: Kathleen Belew on the Rise of “White Power”
Kathleen Belew is an international authority on the white-power movement …
-
Public Thinker: Thomas J. Sugrue on History’s Hard Lessons
From producing towering classics in the field of urban history to penning …
-
Public Thinker: Jack Halberstam on Wildness, Anarchy, and Growing Up Punk
Defying disciplinary categorization, Halberstam’s work draws on … [none-for-homepage]
-
Public Thinker: Stuart Kirsch on Engaged Anthropology
Stuart Kirsch began his career as an anthropologist doing research on myth …
-
Public Thinker: T. L. Taylor on Gamergate, Live-Streaming, and Esports
The qualitative sociologist T. L. Taylor is a professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and cofounder and director of research for AnyKey, an organization dedicated to … [none-for-homepage]
-
Public Thinker: David Blight on Frederick Douglass, Abolition, and Memory
Puzzling out the meaning of the Civil War and its aftermath has been David Blight’s lifelong work … [none-for-homepage]
-
Public Thinker: Issa Kohler-Hausmann on Misdemeanors and Mass Incarceration
While most critics of the American criminal justice system condemn mass incarceration, fewer have … [none-for-homepage]
-
Public Thinker: Matthew Engelke on Thinking Like an Anthropologist
Matthew Engelke is one of the leading anthropologists of his generation …
-
Public Thinker: Timothy Snyder on Russia and “Dark Globalization”
Timothy Snyder has taken a region that resists understanding and made it …




























