Trump

The Documentary (EP. 8)

Stuart Hall: In Conversations revisits the life and work of the Jamaican-born cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, a key figure in the foundation of the field of Cultural Studies. Through interviews, music, and audio archives, this program examines the political and historical context that shaped Stuart Hall’s ideas.

From the 1950s until his death in 2014, Hall was a world renowned black public intellectual, known for his role in establishing the New Left in Britain, his groundbreaking analyses of Thatcherism, and his dialogical understanding of culture and representation.

Hall saw politics in a range of human formations, from the mundane and everyday to the global expansion of free market capitalism.He argued that culture should be understood both as a site for the reproduction of dominant ideologies as well as a location for resisting power and claiming new identities.

Stuart Hall’s visionary understandings of neoliberalism and what he called “authoritarian populism” are worth revisiting today in an era of racially charged nationalism, evidenced in the 2016 Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, Marine Le Pen’s rise in popularity in France, and the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States.

Texas Standard: February 24, 2017

What does the Trump administration really have in store for the next 4 years? Don’t say nobody warned ya. The story today on the Texas Standard.

Social media and text messages suspected behind skyrocketing numbers of inappropriate stident teacher relationships in Texas. What to do? The Texas legislature now stepping in.

Also: a rare conversation with the judge who’s likely to be at the center of a forthcoming wave of lawsuits over a southern wall. NPR’s John Burnett joins us with his one on one.

Texas leads the nation in windpower, but it’s been so successful they’re having to give away power…what if they could store it? What could be a breakthrough.

Stuart Hall Live (Ep. 7)

Listen back to our Views and Brews discussion from December 13, 2016 with KUT’s Rebecca McInroy, along with sociologist Ben Carrington, art historian Cherise Smith, and journalist Steven Thrasher of The Guardian.

They talk about the life and legacy of Stuart Hall and take audience questions.

Who was Stuart Hall? What can his ideas teach us about populist politics, the importance of the visual arts, and the role of the media in our current social and political moment?

V&B: Stuart Hall

They talk about the life and legacy of Stuart Hall and take audience questions.

Who was Stuart Hall? What can his ideas teach us about populist politics, the importance of the visual arts, and the role of the media in our current social and political moment?

Roderick Ferguson (Ep. 6)

In this interview, Ben Carrington, Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, interviews Roderick Ferguson, Professor of African American and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, about his relationship to the work of Stuart Hall.

In the words of Ferguson, he was introduced to Stuart and Catherine Hall when he was 22 under the advisement of George Lipsitz at UC San Diego. During this meeting, Ferguson was struck by Hall’s openness to what cultural studies could be; that Hall was not a patriarch “trying to lay down the law and determine the discipline” but was instead able to separate his ego from doing his scholarly work.

Ferguson’s commitment to treat culture as something important to study – in relation to both race and capital – was something that Hall’s work inspired him to do despite the lack of reception that this kind of work had within the field of American sociology.

That the discipline is painfully far removed from the influence of Stuart Hall was evidenced for Ferguson by his failure to be accepted to the annual American Sociological Association meeting with a panel that was intended to honor Stuart Hall.

This rejection speaks not just about the relationship between American sociology and the work of Hall, but also about the discipline’s marginalization of scholars of color more generally. The loss for sociology in not incorporating the influence of Hall is that the discipline is practiced as “one-dimensional sociology” where neither culture nor race are given the attention they deserve.

While Hall understood all analytical categories to be complex and historically contingent, Ferguson argues that American sociology focuses on an illusion of one-dimensional objectivity at the expense of having real political stakes.

Ferguson pays gratitude to Hall by claiming that his book, The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference (2012) would not have been possible without Hall’s influence.

Transition

Inauguration Day is here, and that means change. We don’t know what’s next – but we rarely ever do. Whether you cheered or not, tomorrow is a new day, with new problems, new ideas, and new ways to be a part of your community.

Threatening To Leave The Country

When elections don’t go your way, you might be tempted to seek out a change of scenery, perhaps a change of citizenship. But it’s important to remember that you are what makes this country so special. So put down your visa application and look around – this can still be your home.

Tips: Saru Jayaraman (Ep. 23)

“Building unity across divide is possible. Building something even better than we had before, out of terrible tragedy, is possible. A movement for change is never more ripe than when we are, in some cases, at our lowest moment. Because it’s the moment in which we are going to demand absolute transformation, and I have every faith and hope that we will do that now.”-Saru Jayaraman

In this edition of The Secret Ingredient Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy talk with Saru Jayaraman. She is the Co-founder and Co-director of The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at The University of California, Berkeley.

Steven Thrasher (Ep. 5)

Steven Thrasher is a writer for the guardian and a PhD student in American Studies at New York University. In this conversation with University of Texas Sociology Professor Ben Carrington, Thrasher discusses his first encounter with Stuart Hall’s work.

The interview provides insight into Hall’s intellectual reach. Thrasher shares how his engagement with Hall comes from a journalistic perspective. Having first read the British intellectual in his American Studies classes, Thrasher discloses feeling initially confused about why a British scholar would be relevant to American Studies. However, he found Policing the Crisis to be especially important for his thinking about covering the aftermath of Michael Brown’s shooting and the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement.

The conversation includes a discussion of how being a public intellectual is not limited to the academy, but also how Hall created a space in which black people can take up the space of public intellectual. Likewise, Thrasher and Carrington comment on the importance of popular media as a “gatekeeper of intellectual space” and Twitter is posited as a useful platform for making intellectual interventions in the public sphere.

-Anima Adjepong

Texas Standard: January 9, 2017

From El Paso to Brownsville: a barrier promising to reshape our landscape and our future.
Today a focus on the wall–a special edition of the Texas Standard.

It was a staple of his presidential campaign. And there are signs, even before his inaguration, work is already underway on Donald Trump’s wall.

But how does the campaign rhetoric square with the reality on the ground… Who’ll build it and at what cost? How will change our communities, our way of life, and how we see each other. On both sides of a new great divide?

Today we’re live from Brownsville, our starting point for “the wall”.

Imani Perry (Ep. 4).

Imani Perry is a Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. In this conversation with University of Texas Sociology Professor Ben Carrington, Perry discusses Hall’s work as foundational for her own intellectual trajectory as a cultural theorist.

Likewise, Perry addresses Hall’s relevance for understanding a U.S. context by noting that the questions Hall asks around political economy, the rise of neoliberalism, race, class, and culture are important for making sense of what is happening in the United States because “we are all grappling with legacies of empire and capitalism and racialization.”

Perry argues that although we see different iterations of these issues as they move around the world, Hall’s theorizing is prescient for making sense of questions of globalization. The conversation also addresses Hall as a model for being a public intellectual who neither postures nor self-aggrandizes but rather is about conversation and engagement with and a responsibility to different public.

Carrington and Perry discuss how Hall’s work is useful for understanding not only Brexit, but also the rise of Donald Trump in the U.S. Perry explains that she understands these issues as part of an “anxiety about the growth of precarity, globalization, and neoliberalism, and the kind of vulnerability that [these issues] produce for whiteness,” as well as an appeal for a return to conventional imperial relations. Hall’s work, which addresses the intersection of historical forces that produce these anxieties, helps us to think about these issues, although he does not necessarily give us the answers. Hall provides a model for how to read the world around us ethically.

-Maggie Tate

Texas Standard: December 13, 2016

Commerce, education and…the third one… I can’t…oh yes: Rick Perry has been tapped for energy secretary. Is he ready? The story today on the Standard.

Federal officials come to Texas and get an earful from parents of special ed students. We’ll hear what they heard.

Also, notes of dischord among musicians in Fort Worth have some big city symphonies trying to maintain harmony. We’ll hear how.

From frosted flakes to shoes and home appliances: the new political frontier– is everywhere and everything. How the politics of what we shop for affects the state of our union.

Plus, potential SCOTUS picks and more…turn it up y’all , it’s Texas Standard time.

Texas Standard: December 12, 2016

An oil industry tycoon from Wichita Falls and a hacking scandal involving presidential politics. What do they have in common? The story today on the Texas Standard.

As college students cram for finals, an tumultuous test for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. One that could put the degrees of thousands of students in jeopardy.

Also, what’s the color of liquid gold? The west Texas town of Fort Stockton bets it’ll be crystal clear. We’ll hear why.

And the desiccation of the Alamo: will cooler heads prevail in the coming battle to save it?

Texas Standard: December 5, 2016

After a phone call from Taiwan and a few tweets from the President-elect, a potential global crisis. A goof, or something more: the story today on the Standard

A pension plan meltdown that could leave Dallas bankrupt. But the rest of us are ok…right? The state controller warns, this could hurt all of Texas. He’ll tell us how and why.

Guess who’s making a massive new investment in drilling in the Gulf of Mexico? Here’s a hint: its initials are B and P.

And the bizarre disappearance of 300 rare blind salamanders from a Federal research center in Texas. Some wonder if they’re part of a black market in exotic animal trafficking. Those stories and much more today on the Texas Standard.

Bullying

People don’t feel that great when their locus of control is compromised, and that’s pretty much what bullying is all about. So why does bullying exist and how does it function?

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the psychology of bullying.

Gary Younge (Ep. 2)

In his interview with Gary Younge, editor at large for The Guardian, UT Austin Professor Ben Carrington begins with a reflection on Younge’s article following Stuart Hall’s passing entitled, “Stuart Hall: A Class Warrior and a Class Act.” Younge praises Hall for not being interested in sounding clever or performing academic stardom.

This is particularly notable because, according to Younge, it is common for academic stars in the current era to say things that are catchy, “like dangling baubles that make people sit up and think you’re clever.” On the contrary, Hall had a “soft and nurturing presence” and wanted to be useful rather than dominating.

This was evidenced in the way that Hall would “almost appear without a trace when he came into a room.” Younge first became aware of Stuart Hall when he was 7 or 8 through Hall’s position at the Open University, but then became more familiar with his work reading Marxism Today, especially “New Times.”

In addition to the relevance of his ideas, Younge reflects on how meaningful it was to see a black man as an intellectual who could say what he had to say but also keep his integrity intact. For Younge, it was significant that Hall did not appear embittered or insecure, that he “seemed happy in his skin” and that “he didn’t have to put someone else down in order to build himself up.”

Younge remembers his last communication with Hall, which was an exchange over Younge’s “Ethical World Cup.” Commenting on the loss of Hall, Younge states that while “there was never a time where we didn’t need him… arguably we need him now more than ever, though I guess that was always true.”

-Maggie Tate

Unity

It’s been a long year and a long week, no matter how you voted on Election Day. We are all tired, and starting to look towards the future. It’s worth remembering that even though we may have different points of view – in the end, we are all humans.

Texas Standard: November 10, 2016

Is governor Perry going to Washington after all? Why the president elect may be looking to Texas to fill some top jobs, we’ll explore. Also, a prominent congressman from Texas tells us the Senate should kill the filibuster. Not that there’s no precedent for such a rule change, as Senate democrats may recall. Plus Wendy Davis tells us this week’s vote stands for something perhaps less obvious: the need for a new focus on education. We’ll hear her explanation and the potential for a democrat challenge to Ted Cruz in 2018. And tips for your weekend getaway, how to eat tacos and write about them too and much more, today on the Texas Standard:

Vote

Today is the last day of early voting in Texas, and next Tuesday is Election Day. Forget the candidates, forget the talking heads on cable news, forget the social media arguments – remember that part of what makes our country special is our right to vote. No matter who you tick the box for, make sure you get your voice heard.

Undecided Voters

With 59 days left to the 2016 Presidential Election, most people have had their decision made for several months. But there are hold-outs – some are still researching issues and exploring their options. This poem is for the ones who dare to wait.