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Hinderliter et al., eds., Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics Duke U. Press, 2009

David Joselit, Feedback: Television Against Democracy MIT Press, 2007

What happens to people in suburbs and exurbs? What kind of political community is produced there? And what role do, and can, pictures and images play in situating humans as isolated and aloof, or communal and democratic? David Joselit shares his perspective on these and other issues.

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Margaret A. Lindauer, Devouring Frida: The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo Wesleyan U. Press, 1999

Frida Kahlo's life and work are world famous -- yet what has become of the Mexican artist's radical politics? Art historian Margaret A. Lindauer argues that Kahlo's artistic legacy has been done a disservice by those who would read the painter's works off her personal life, instead of looking at the complex intellectual and political processes that created them.

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Awake and Sing!, by Clifford Odets, at Aurora Theatre

Eric Bentley, ed., Thirty Years of Treason Nation Books, 2002

Some Longings Survive Death, by Dario Robleto

Clifford Odets was called before HUAC in 1952; one of his first plays was about unionized workers choosing to strike. Walt Odets talks about his father's life and work. Also, Dario Robleto's sculptures in the UC Berkeley Art Museum exhibition Human/Nature address multiple phenomena, among them melting glaciers, extinction, and mourning.

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Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin Reaktion, 2007

Militant Esthetix

Was the German-Jewish thinker, literary critic and essayist Walter Benjamin primarily a metaphysical or mystical thinker, or were his writings grounded in a radical political sensibility? Esther Leslie articulates many of Benjamin's ideas on the relationship between politics and art and on the growth of mass industrial society.

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Experimental Geography: The Exhibition

Bullard & Wright, eds., Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina Westview, 2009

Of what significance is place to politics, to cultural consciousness, to who gets what? In Experimental Geography, Nato Thompson contends that spaces around us shape who we are. He describes initiatives at the intersection of art and geography. And Debra Lyn Bassett points to the overlooked significance of place -- and particularly rural locations -- in the making of disaster relief and other policies.

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Ogletree & Sarat, eds., When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice NYU Press, 2009

Art is Moving

Death penalty abolitionists have made tangible progress. The wrongful conviction of innocent people has spurred reform. And yet, contends Douglas Berman, a huge problem goes largely unnoticed and unaddressed: the American affinity for what he calls extreme punishment. Also, Lisa Rasmussen and Lauren Odell Usher talk about the art show Art & the Body Politick.