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New Books in Geography

New Books in Geography

Written by: Marshall Poe
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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geographyNew Books Network Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Shawn William Miller, "Dream Road to Pan America: A Century in Pursuit of the World's Longest Highway" (U California Press, 2026)

    Shawn William Miller, "Dream Road to Pan America: A Century in Pursuit of the World's Longest Highway" (U California Press, 2026)
    Jun 29 2026
    A century after the Pan-American Highway was first conceived, its story remains largely unknown—even to the hundreds of motorists who annually attempt the 30,000-kilometer drive from far northern Alaska to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. There is more to the highway, however, than the persistent allure of the open road. In Dream Road to Pan America: A Century in Pursuit of the World's Longest Highway (University of California Press, 2026), historian Dr. Shawn William Miller unveils a larger tale of lofty ideals and bedrock greed, romantic adventure and pragmatic diplomacy, immigrant desperation and Indigenous resistance. This book journeys to the early 1920s when everyday Americans invented the idea of a road that would spread fraternity, democracy, and prosperity across the hemisphere. It looks at the commercial and geopolitical interests that shaped the highway—often with little concern for those living along its margins—and explains why the road became an escape route for millions of migrants rather than a corridor for tourists. Dr. Miller contends that the highway’s troubled past points to an unresolved future, offering insights into the growing costs of continuing down well-worn paths. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography
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    40 mins
  • Don Thomas Deere, "The Invention of Order: On the Coloniality of Space" (Duke UP, 2026)

    Don Thomas Deere, "The Invention of Order: On the Coloniality of Space" (Duke UP, 2026)
    Jun 11 2026
    In The Invention of Order: On the Coloniality of Space (Duke University Press, 2026), Don Thomas Deere retraces the colonial origins of spatial organization in the Americas and the Caribbean and its lasting impact on modern structures of knowledge, power, race, gender as well as understandings of global modernity. The coloniality of space dispossessed Indigenous, African, and mixed populations as it constructed new systems of control and movement. Deere demonstrates how these developments manifested, among other forms, in urban grid patterns imposed during the development of Spanish colonial cities as well as totalizing trade routes crisscrossing the Atlantic. Drawing on a range of thinkers including Enrique Dussel, Édouard Glissant, and Sylvia Wynter, Deere reveals how movement—who travels, who settles, and who is excluded—becomes an essential component of control under colonial rule. Against the violence of spatial reordering, Deere outlines how novel forms of resistance and insurgency geographies still take hold, particularly in the Caribbean, where landscapes remain excessive, eruptive, and uncaptured by the order of modernity. Don Thomas Deere is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Texas A&M University. He previously taught at Wesleyan University and received his PhD with distinction from DePaul University and BA from Cornell University. He is a Mellon Mays fellow and the recipient of a Mellon Career Enhancement Faculty Fellowship. His research focuses on the intersections of Latin American, Caribbean, and Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography
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    46 mins
  • Javier Arbona-Homar, "Explosivity: Following What Remains" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

    Javier Arbona-Homar, "Explosivity: Following What Remains" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
    Jun 8 2026
    Offering a novel approach to contemporary landscape studies, Explosivity: Following What Remains (U Minnesota Press, 2025) unearths the hidden legacies of violence that have shaped the physical and cultural environment of the San Francisco Bay area. As he sifts through the historical debris of previous centuries, Dr. Javier Arbona-Homar analyzes a series of explosions that took place between 1866 and 2011 to call attention to the scattered remnants of militarism and racialized capitalism embedded in the region’s geography. From incidents involving nineteenth-century explosives manufacturing and World War II munitions loading to radical activism and contemporary television productions, Dr. Arbona-Homar locates a pattern of historical violence that refocuses the broader racial and colonial context. Citing the material, social, and political conditions that gave rise to these disparate episodes, he reviews the historic erasure of those driving forces and puts forth alternative possibilities for how such disasters might be memorialized. Synthesizing a diverse set of field research methods, including oral histories and site visits, and supplemented by specially commissioned landscape photographs by Andrea Gaffney, Explosivity presents a radical exercise in the exposition of public memory. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography
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    1 hr and 6 mins
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