2025 has been a year of dazzling scholarship, worldbuilding, and justice-driven imagination.
These books—written by the brilliant authors we’ve been honored to support—offer bold critiques, fresh methods, and new ways of living together in community.
Pick up one or many for your favorite interdisciplinary scholar, artist, and activist who thinks beyond boundaries (and grab some for yourself while you're at it!).
Want to see your book here next year? Get in touch to see how our team of developmental editors, copyeditors, indexers, and researchers can help you go from draft to published.
Abolitionist Imaginaries
Books that map the violences of incarceration and collect the visions that move us toward freedom
Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons
Brittany Friedman
University of North Carolina Press
A searing examination of how misinformation, racial fantasy, and political opportunism uphold punitive systems—and what it takes to dismantle them.
Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore's Police State
Michael Casiano
University of Illinois Press
A historical excavation of Baltimore’s law-enforcement apparatus, tracing how policing has always been a machinery of racialized surveillance and control.
Criminalization of Women: Abortion, Inequity, and Resistance in Chile
Michele Eggers-Barison
University of Illinois Press
A sharp analysis of reproductive criminalization and the feminist movements challenging punitive state power.
Diasporic Queer Routes
Transnational stories of belonging, refusal, and creative survival
Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Queer Limits of South African Blackness
Jordache A. Ellapen
Duke University Press
A multisensory exploration of Afro-Indian femininities and queer life in South Africa, revealing the tangled afterlives of indenture.
Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone
Alvin K. Wong
Duke University Press
A vibrant study of Sinophone queer cultural politics and the friction-filled comparisons that shape Hong Kong’s place in the world.
Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure, and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women’s Art
Bimbola Akinbola
Duke University Press
A rich exploration of Nigerian diasporic women’s art and the radical pleasures found in disruption, misfit, and play.
University Futures
Ideas and inspiration for transforming academic life for those on campus and beyond
How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University
Perry Zurn
Duke University Press
A close look at trans survival in the university, showing how care, creativity, and collectivity can reshape hostile institutions.
Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color's Guide to Teaching and Thriving
Chavella T. Pittman
University of Oklahoma Press
A practical and affirming guide for women faculty of color seeking to thrive inside and beyond academia’s inequitable systems.
Humane Infrastructures
Patrik Svensson
MIT Press
An intriguing analysis of the infrastructures of humanistic knowledge production and how we can build more humane ones.
Platformed Resistance
Movements, media, and the digital tactics that push back
Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture
Aymar Jèan Escoffery
MIT Press
A hopeful framework for QTPOC media practices that repair harm, nurture connection, and reshape public culture.
We Tried to Tell Y'all: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives
Meredith D. Clark
Oxford University Press
A lively chronicle of Black Twitter’s counter-narratives and the communities that transformed online culture.
Open Secrecy: How Technology Empowers the Digital Underworld
Isak Ladegaard
University of California Press
A gripping investigation of the digital underworld and the technologies that blur the line between exposure and concealment.
Youth Organizing and Liberation
Radical pedagogies and social movements led by young people
Youth Organizing for Reproductive Justice: A Guide for Liberation
Chris Barcelos
University of California Press
A field guide to youth-led reproductive justice organizing that centers liberation, care, and long-term power building.
Everyday Futures: Language as Survival for Indigenous Youth in Diaspora
Stephanie L. Canizales and Brendan H. O'Connor
Stanford University Press
A nuanced analysis of how Indigenous diasporic youth use language to craft survivable futures in the face of ongoing erasure.
Hip Hop Civics: Connected Learning in the Rap Classroom
Jabari M. Evans
University of Michigan Press
A dynamic look at rap-based learning environments that reimagine civic education through culture and creativity.
Queer and Trans Worldbuilding
Scholarship imagining expansive queer and trans worlds, rooted in radical political possibilities
Trans Technologies
Oliver L. Haimson
MIT Press
A creative analysis of how trans communities innovate, rework, and hack technologies to build livable futures.
Queering Women, Peace and Security: Expanding Feminist Approaches to Gender in Peacebuilding
Jamie L. Hagen
Oxford University Press
A much-needed corrective to global security frameworks made by centering queer feminist approaches to conflict and peacebuilding.
Queer Relajo: Feeling the Nightscapes of Mexicanidad
David Tenorio
University of Michigan Press
A provocative journey through queer nightlife and resistance in Mexico City.
Feminist Tech Tinkerings
Critical feminist engagements with infrastructures, labs, and the politics of making
Labs of Our Own: Feminist Tinkerings with Science
Sig/Sara Giordano
Rutgers University Press
A feminist reimagining of scientific practice, from collaborative tinkering to alternative lab cultures.
Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen
Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin
Duke University Press
A feminist critique of eerie, hidden, or overlooked technologies—and the power they quietly exert in intimate spaces and social relations.
Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal
The DISCO Network
Stanford University Press
A powerful Black feminist disability media studies embrace of skepticism as a tool for mitigating technological harms.
Justice in and through Storytelling
Books that trace narrative as a force for liberation
Justice in 21st-Century Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder
Cristina Bacchilega and Pauline Greenhill
Bloomsbury
A delightful read of how modern fairy tales rework wonder into a tool for justice and political critique.
We Are Pregnant with Freedom: Black Feminist Storytelling for Reproductive Justice
Stacie Selmon McCormick
University of California Press
An inspiring celebration of Black feminist storytelling as a method for reproductive justice and communal healing.
Conjuring the Haint: The Haunting Poetics of Black Women
drea brown
University Press of Mississippi
A beautifully lyrical examination of Black women's poetry, spectral narratives, and spiritual reclamation.
Race, Family, and Care
Intimate worlds shaped by history, capital, politics, and love
The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States
Kit W. Myers
University of California Press
A nuanced critique of adoption, race, and family-making in the United States and a reimagining of kinship and care.
Racial Care: On Asian American Suffering and Survival
James McMaster
Duke University Press
A transformative exploration of how Asian American communities navigate suffering, recognition, and survival.
The Politics of Care Work: Puerto Rican Women Organizing for Social Justice
Emma Amador
Duke University Press
An inspiring feminist history of Puerto Rican social worker and caregiver activism for economic and social justice.
Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times
Tamara Lea Spira
University of California Press
A bold and loving vision for queer reproductive justice grounded in radical critique and communal support.
Cinematic Worlds
Film as theory, method, community bond, and social document
Toward a More Perfect Rebellion: Multiracial Media Activism Made in LA
Josslyn Jeanine Luckett
University of California Press
A fascinating history of the radical UCLA filmmakers who redefined US cinema through community storytelling.
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film
Beenash Jafri
University of Minnesota Press
A nuanced take on Asian–Indigenous relationalities and how Asian diasporic filmmakers unsettle colonial visual regimes and build new cinematic attachments.
Y Tu Mamá También
Juan Llamas-Rodriguez
McGill-Queens University Press
An accessible read of the iconic, transnational queer film classic and its legacy across borders and generations.
Sounding Justice
Black and Latinx sonic innovation and the vibrational ways people forge worlds
Intersectional Listening: Gentrification and Black Sonic Life in Washington, DC
Allie Martin
Oxford University Press
A rich account of gentrification, Black sonic life, and the politics of hearing in Washington, DC.
Radiophonic Feminisms: Latina Voices in the Digital Age of Broadcasting
Esther Díaz Martín
University of Texas Press
An insightful analysis of Latina voices and the politics of broadcasting in the digital age.
The Aesthetic Character of Blackness: Sounds Like Us
Jemma DeCristo
Duke University Press
A thought-provoking analysis of the role of Black sound in Black liberation and the art world.
Replaying Marc Anthony: Sonic, Political, and Cultural Resonances
Frances R. Aparicio
Ohio State University Press
A fitting tribute to the political and cultural power of Latinx pop music within and beyond diaspora.
Information Technologies and Race
Histories and futures of information architecture, computation, control, and resistance
The Human in Bits: Graphical Computers, Black Abstractions
Kris Cohen
Duke University Press
A fascinating study of racialization in computer history, media theory, and Black abstract art.
Peculiar Satisfaction: Thomas Jefferson and the Mastery of Subjects
Melissa Adler
Fordham University Press
A detailed map of how Thomas Jefferson's racialized vision for knowledge structures contemporary libraries, archives, and museums.
Transnational Sport and Power
Sport as politics, spectacle, and contestation
Basketball Trafficking: Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams
Javier Wallace
Duke University Press
An insightful read of the role of Black labor exploitation and student visa politics in the global athletic industrial complex.
Interrogating Integration: Sports, Celebrity, and Scandal in the Making of New Germany
Kate Zambon
University of Michigan Press
A thought-provoking analysis of how German identity and racial integration are constructed through sports culture, celebrity, and scandal.
Colonial Afterlives
The debris of empire and the futures made in its wake
Afterlives of Discovery: Speculative Geographies in the Settler Colonial Imaginary
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
Duke University Press
A fierce critique of the racialized logics of Discovery, extraction, and settler colonial state-making in Colombia.
Bad Medicine: Settler Colonialism and the Institutionalization of American Indians
Sarah A. Whitt
Duke University Press
A powerful history of medical and educational institutionalization as a tool of settler colonialism.
Disaster Nationalism: Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka
Vivian Y. Choi
Duke University Press
A deft read of how tsunami governance, postcolonial militarization, and civil war politics intertwine in Sri Lanka’s national imagination.
Environmental Justice Now
Urgent analyses of climate crisis, ecology, and racialized sustainability
Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe
Elana Resnick
Stanford University Press
A critical examination of ecological sustainability, labor, and racialized environmental injustice among Roma waste workers in Bulgaria.
The Almond Paradox: Cracking Open the Politics of What Plants Need
Emily Reisman
University of California Press
A fascinating analysis of the almond industry's water politics, agronomic knowledge, and capitalism-shaped agriculture.
Homesick
Nicholas Shapiro
Duke University Press
A compelling investigation of toxic housing, race, and collective environmental struggle in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Embodied Knowledges
Theories rooted in flesh, disability, and lived experience
Dos X: Disability and Racial Dysphoria in Latinx and Filipinx American Culture
Sony Coráñez Bolton
University of Texas Press
A brilliant disability analysis of racial misrecognition across Filipinx and Latinx communities.
Body Problems: What Intersex Priest Sally Gross Teaches Us About Embodiment, Justice, and Belonging
M. Wolff
Duke University Press
A profound meditation on embodiment, justice, and religion through South African intersex activism.
Counter-cartographies: Neurodivergence and the Errancies of Performance
Leon J. Hilton
University of Minnesota Press
A wide-ranging read of autistic and neurodivergent performance in film and culture.
Knowing as Moving: Perception, Memory, and Place
Susan Leigh Foster
Duke University Press
A creatively embodied exploration of how moving through the world enables human connection and communal knowing.
Gaming Worlds
Video games as sites for resisting oppression and imagining otherwise
How to Queer the World: Radical Worldbuilding through Video Games
Bo Ruberg
NYU Press
A joyous journey through the queer worldbuilding possibilities and radical pleasures in video games.
Indigenomicon: American Indians, Video Games, and the Structures of Dispossession
Jodi A. Byrd
Duke University Press
A powerful critique of the settler colonial logics at work in video games alongside Indigenous resistance to erasure.
Labor Politics of Capital
Histories and futures of labor politics under global capitalism
Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America
Kati Curts
NYU Press
A revelatory history of industrial magnate Henry Ford’s religious beliefs and how they shaped US business in the twentieth century.
Sweatshop Capital: Profit, Violence, and Solidarity Movements in the Long Twentieth Century
Beth Robinson
Duke University Press
Traces a century of global labor exploitation and the movements fighting back.
Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra
Laurian R. Bowles
University of Pennsylvania Press
Centering Black women porters in Accra, this book reframes modernity through labor, gender, and creativity.
Forging New Geographies
Spatial imaginations that remap belonging, reshape borders, and propose alternate futures
Democracy's Foot Soldiers: World War I and the Politics of Empire in the Greater Caribbean
Reena N. Goldthree
Princeton University Press
The compelling story of how World War I transformed Caribbean and British imperial political imaginaries.
Bridging Sonic Borders: Popular Music in Contemporary Dominican/Dominicanyork Literature
Sharina Maíllo-Pozo
University of Texas Press
A creative study of Dominican and Dominicanyork literary soundscapes that move across nations and cultures.
Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social and Cultural Geography
Ishan Ashutosh and Jamie Winders
Wiley
A comprehensive overview of social and cultural geography's history, present, and futures.
Feminist Possibilities
Bold, genre-crossing feminist scholarship that shapes new worlds
Foremother Love: Phillis Wheatley and Black Feminist Criticism
Dana Murphy
Duke University Press
A loving investigation of Phillis Wheatley's legacy as a blueprint for Black feminist criticism.
Insurgent Visions: Feminism, Justice, Solidarity
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Duke University Press
A radical transnational feminist vision of solidarity and systemic transformation across education, politics, and culture.
The Witch Studies Reader
Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward
Duke University Press
A sweeping decolonial feminist collection of global witchcraft practices, representations, and movements.
Remaking Art Worlds
Aesthetic practices that invent new possibilities for living
Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War
Karen Redrobe
University of California Press
A feminist exploration of animation’s role in shaping the memory, aesthetics, and meaning of war.
Imperial Stewards: Chinese Art and the Making of America's Pacific Century
K. Ian Shin
Stanford University Press
A revealing study of Chinese art collecting as a tool of US imperial imagination across the transpacific.
Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair
Joseph M. Pierce
Duke University Press
A transformative look at Indigenous relations, speculation, and healing in visual and literary culture.
Grief, Trauma, and Survival
Studies of loss that generate new forms of life
Tears for Tears: Aesthetics in Grief Minor
Sandra Ruiz
NYU Press
A poignant exploration of minoritarian artists transforming grief into anticolonial creative expression.
Transforming Trauma: A Relational Approach to Disorganizing Systemic Violence
Kate Lockwood Harris
Oxford University Press
A groundbreaking approach to healing toxic and traumatized organizations and building more nurturing futures.
