Colin talks with Jennifer Lynn Kelly, author of “Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tourism Across Occupied Palestine” to learn about the promise and pitfalls of solidarity tourism. On the one hand, solidarity tourism can be used to imagine and build a just future. On the other hand, it often recreates or reinforces structures of colonial inequality.
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Please check out Invited to Witness, available [here]
In our conversation, Kelly was diligent to note several people who have supported her work. Since not all of those shoutouts made it into the final edit, we’ll note that she credited Barbara Harlow, Ann Laura Stoller, and Ella Shohat.
We look back at the man who called himself the “bicentennial president” — Richard M. Nixon — and the 1976 celebration he helped to plan. Examining the politics of past U.S. birthday parties, we ask what they can tell us about the present. How much has changed? We also spend some time talking about the World Cup and how much more fun it is than the Semiquincentennial. Yay 250!
We’re joined by Akil Fletcher, an anthropologist who studies the intersection of video gaming and race. We discuss “Relooted,” an exciting new art heist video game, where players raid Western art collections in order to steal art and repatriate that art to Africa.
For more about Akil or to read his scholarship: https://www.akilfletcher.com/
Mariel reads from the book “Mumbo Jumbo” by Ishmael Reed
Reflecting on current events, Mariel and Colin discuss the proliferation of atrocity images on social media. What is at stake when these images are treated as a tool of political mobilization?
References:
Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others.
Eubanks, W. Ralph. 2025. Emmett Till Then and Now. in Bulletin by Monument Lab.
Hernandez, Joe. 2021. “Read this powerful statement from Darnella Frazier, who filmed George Floyd’s murder.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/05/26/1000475344/read-this-powerful-statement-from-darnella-frazier-who-filmed-george-floyds-murd
Jackson, Jenn. 2022. “The Militancy of (Black) Memory ” SAQ. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-9825933
Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/night-drift/pastel
License code: B8YVHLPEYANQ7MQB
This episode is a deep dive into the “creative city” model of urban planning. We talk about the ways that influential urban planners like Richard Florida and Charles Landry have promoted investment in the arts as a way to solve urban problems. We will answer the question, can art solve poverty? (Answer: No).
Key Sources:
Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class.
Landry, Charles. The Creative City A Toolkit for Innovators.
Melamed, Samantha. “Can this tiny storefront save Philly’s most drug-ravaged neighborhood?” Philadelphia Inquirer. March 30, 2017.
Denmead, Tyler. The Creative Underclass: Youth, Race, and the Gentrifying City.
Mould, Oli. Urban Subversion and the Creative City.
Montgomery, Alesia. “Reappearance of the Public. Placemaking, Minoritization, and Resistance in Detroit.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 2016.
In anticipation of the Super Bowl, and in response to conservative outrage over the selection of artist Bad Bunny as halftime performer, we present a deep dive into the history and politics of the NFL’s halftime show.
Major Sections Include:
Introducing the episode 00-1:30
Reflecting on current events 1:31-15:00
Recurring halftime themes and the identity of the NFL 15:00-24:52
The history of the halftime show 24:52-34:38
Nipplegate 38:48-49:16
Racial politics in the NFL 49:16-70:00
Michael Jackson’s Unprecedented Super Bowl Spectacular 70:00-74:46
As N.F.L. Fights Racism and Sexism, Team Owners Undercut the Message. New York Times. 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/sports/football/woody-johnson-trump-jets.html
Horowitz, Juliana Menasce, Kiana Cox and Kiely Hurst. 2025. “Views of Race, Policing and Black Lives Matter in the 5 Years Since George Floyd’s Killing.” Pew Research Center. May 7. https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/05/07/views-of-race-policing-and-black-lives-matter-in-the-5-years-since-george-floyds-killing/
Honestly, we just wanted to do a normal episode that didn’t react to current events. We thought that the War on Terror would be a somewhat stable historical artifact. – Then Trump invaded Venezuela, kidnapped its president, and stole its oil. So this episode is unexpectedly relevant. While we don’t comment on Venezuela directly, there are some important themes in thinking about the aesthetics of war that are unfortunately topical.
“It’s Brutal!” Trump, Architecture, and American Authoritarianism. (Weird Little Architects Part II). E08.
In this follow up to our episode on Trump’s “Weird Little Architects” (E06) we examine the ways that architecture has been instrumentalized by the Trump administration. Through a close look at the Executive Order “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again,” and at administration comments around the renovation of the White House, we show how architecture is used by the administration to advance its authoritarian and white supremacist projects.
Major sections include:
Trump’s Architecture Program. 00-37:00
Fascist Aesthetics and the Demolition of the White House. 37:00-56:00
Brutalism and Modernism as a Contrast to the Trump Agenda. 56:00-81:00
Benjamin, Walter. 1935. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
Medovoi, Leerom. 2012.
“Dogma-Line Racism: Islamophobia and the Second Axis of Race.” Social Text. 30 (2 (111)): 43–74. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-1541754
We used a quotation: “The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals,” which should be attributed to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
We invited Nick Sturm to join us to tell us about his recent Defector article, “Good Riddance to The Best American Poetry.” Nick tells us about the reactionary ideals which shaped the poetry anthology series and how these reactionary ideals influence American politics and the wider world of poetry.
Nick Sturm teaches at Georgia State University in Atlanta. His book “Publishing the New York School: Small Press Communities and American Poetry” will be published by Columbia University Press. Nick is also in the research stage on another book-length project, “The Poetry Business,” that examines the role of the state, nonprofits, universities, and philanthropy in the professionalization of American poetry. A few other forthcoming projects include a chapter on poet Frank O’Hara’s publishing history in “Frank O’Hara in Context” from Cambridge University Press; editing “The Collected Poems of Jim Brodey” for Nightboat Books; and a chapter on the relationship between federal arts funding and small press editorial practices in “The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary Editing.”
