Couverture de Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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 Interviews with Columbia University Press authors.New Books Network Art Science
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    • Ted Striphas, "Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet" (Columbia UP, 2023)

      Ted Striphas, "Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet" (Columbia UP, 2023)
      Feb 18 2026
      In this episode, Ted Striphas, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet (Columbia University Press 2023), considering how some pre-digital human systems functioned through repetitive structures and automated processes that have similarities to electronic algorithms. They discuss how cognition has become digitized, dispersed across algorithmic and biological systems, and how digital tools attempt to overtake lived experiences and knowledges. Their conversation traces the history of computation while engaging culture and language as analytical tools. Their dialogue connects analog media, cultural practices, and symbolic systems to reflect on the importance of words in the human experience. Long before digital code, verbal narratives shaped (or attempted to shape) our relationship with knowledge and power; building on that insight, an important analytical point to critique algorithms begins with culture, and that culture begins in language. This episode and the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes are sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation.Our conversation in Spanish about Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet is available here. Topics and scholars mentioned in this episode: Héctor José Huyke, Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual (Editora Educación Emergente, 2024). The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control (Columbia University Press, 2011). Erik Hoel's notion of a “consciousness winter.” Lawrence Grossberg Medium theory Joshua Myerwicz Janice Radway Scriptocentrism “Things that different forms of media do to us.” -Ted Striphas Scott Kushner, University of Rhode Island, “A turnstile is more persuasive than a person saying 'go this way.’" Alan Touring The Late Age of Print: Blog and book "The locus of cultural decision making [has been] shifting in the direction of computer systems and algorithms." -Ted Striphas “Build different meanings of words so we can build different worlds,” -Ted Striphas. “What is culture when human beings are not the only one producing it?” -Ted Striphas Pluriverse, A Post-Development Dictionary (Columbia University Press, 2019), edited by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta.
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      59 min
    • Kristin Roebuck, "Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)

      Kristin Roebuck, "Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)
      Feb 10 2026
      In her book Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War (Columbia UP, 2025), historian Kristin Roebuck grapples with the question: Why did Japan embrace “mixed blood” as an authoritarian empire yet turn to xenophobic racial nationalism as a Cold War democracy? Through in-depth and rigorous historical archival research, Roebuck traces the fraught history of sex, reproduction, race and empire building in Japan from the 1930s to 1950s. Through her scholarship, she crucially demonstrates how discourses on sex, mixed-race children, and adoption revolved around control of women and their bodies to strengthen nationalism and imperialism. This monograph is an important read for listeners who are interested in the topics of race, gender and empire and scholars in Asian Studies, History, and Gender Studies.
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      59 min
    • Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in Me: How Experts Shape Same-Sex Marriage Debates" (Columbia UP, 2025)

      Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in Me: How Experts Shape Same-Sex Marriage Debates" (Columbia UP, 2025)
      Jan 30 2026
      In both the United States and France, each side of the legal battle over same-sex marriage and parenthood relied heavily on experts. Despite the similarity of issues, however, lawmakers in each country turned to different sets of authorities: from economists and psychoanalysts to priests and ordinary people. They even prized different types of expertise—empirical research in the United States versus abstract theory in France.Exploring the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States and France, Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer sheds new light on the power of experts to influence high-stakes democratic debates. Drawing on extensive interviews and ethnographic observation, Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer traces the divergences between the two countries, showing why some experts are ubiquitous in one but absent in the other. He argues that lawmakers, judges, lawyers, journalists, and activists covet something only experts can provide: the credibility and aura of authority, or “expert capital,” which they deploy to advance their agendas. Expert capital is not derived from scientific or technical merit alone but is produced through cultural norms, material resources, and social relationships, which vary greatly across national contexts.Through the story of the fight over gay rights, By the Power Vested in Me: How Experts Shape Same-Sex Marriage Debates (Columbia UP, 2025) reveals how and why certain experts—but not others—obtain the authority to shape public opinion and policy. At a time of soaring public distrust in experts, this book offers new ways to understand the contested political role of expertise and its consequences. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology at William Penn University, where he specializes in the cultural and interpretive study of space, behavior, and identity. His scholarship examines how designed environments shape social interaction, connectedness, and moral life across diverse settings. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His current research projects include the study of escape rooms as emotion-structured environments, temporal urban environments in rural historical towns, student experiences of hanging out and being at home while at college and university, and a more recent study on the making of rodeo. To learn more about his work, visit his personal website, Google Scholar profile, or connect with him on Bluesky (@professorjohnst.bsky.social) or Twitter/X (@ProfessorJohnst). He can also be reached directly by email.
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      56 min
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