Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

Jan 04 2025 413 ep. 58 mins 37

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast artwork

Interviews with Columbia University Press authors.

Arts History Science

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Todd McGowan, "Universality and Identity Politics" (Columbia UP, 2020)

Jan 04 2025 65 mins

The great political ideas and movements of the modern world were founded on a promise of universal emancipation. But in recent decades, much of the Left has grown suspicious of such aspirations. Critics see the invocation of universality as a form of domination or a way of speaking for others, and have come to favor a politics of particularism—often derided as “identity politic

Jessica Namakkal, "Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India" (Columbia UP, 2021)

Jan 01 2025 84 mins

After India achieved independence from the British in 1947, there remained five scattered territories governed by the French imperial state. It was not until 1962 that France fully relinquished control. Once decolonization took hold across the subcontinent, Western-led ashrams and utopian communities remained in and around the former French territory of Pondicherry—most notably t

Joseph McBride, "George Cukor's People: Acting for a Master Director" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Dec 21 2024 116 mins

The director of classic films such as Sylvia Scarlett, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam's Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady, George Cukor is widely admired but often misunderstood. Reductively stereotyped in his time as a "woman's director"-a thinly veiled, disparaging code for "gay"-he brilliantly directed a wide range of iconic actors and actresses, including Cary Grant

Nergis Ertürk, "Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Dec 18 2024 72 mins

Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union (Columbia UP, 2024) examines political relations and literary translations between Turkey and the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s through to the 1960s. By drawing on a wide range of texts – from erotic comedy, historical fiction and film, to socialist realist novels and theatre – Ertürk argues that th

Donald R. Prothero, "The Story of Earth's Climate in 25 Discoveries: How Scientists Found the Connections Between Climate and Life" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Dec 14 2024 41 mins

Over 4.5 billion years, Earth's climate has transformed tremendously. Before our more temperate recent past, the planet swung from one extreme to another--from a greenhouse world of sweltering temperatures and high sea levels to a "snowball earth" in which glaciers reached the equator. During this history, we now know, living things and the climate have always influenced and even s

Jonathan Conlin, "The Met: A History of a Museum and Its People" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Dec 07 2024 57 mins

New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s greatest cultural institutions. Its holdings encompass a vast range—including paintings, sculptures, costumes, instruments, and arms and armor—and span millennia, from ancient Egypt and Greece to Islamic art to European Old Masters and modern artists. How did the Met amass this trove, and what do the experienc

Lauren D. Olsen, "Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Nov 23 2024 53 mins

Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathetic and more concerned with equity. In practice, however, these good intentions have not translated into critical consciousness. Humanities and social sciences education has often not only failed to deliver on its promise but even entr

Tyler W. Williams, "If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Nov 14 2024 44 mins

In If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi (Columbia UP, 2024), Tyler W. Williams puts questions of materiality, circulation, and performance at the center of his investigation into how literature comes to be defined and produced within a language, specifically, premodern Hindi. Williams proposes new methods for working with written text artifacts and a new appro

Rajbir Singh Judge, "Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Oct 30 2024 49 mins

How do traditions and peoples grapple with loss, particularly when it is of such magnitude that it defies the possibility of recovery or restoration? Rajbir Singh Judge offers new ways to understand loss and the limits of history by considering Maharaja Duleep Singh and his struggle during the 1880s to reestablish Sikh rule, the lost Khalsa Raj, in Punjab. Sikh sovereignty in what

Sarah Dimick, "Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Oct 29 2024 55 mins

As climate change alters seasons around the globe, literature registers and responds to shifting environmental time. A writer and a fisher track the distribution of beach trash in Chennai, chronicling disruptions in seasonal winds and currents along the Bay of Bengal. An essayist in the northeastern United States observes that maple sap flows earlier now, prompting him to reflect o