#AcademicRunPlaylist - 4/27/25

I had a good day back in Boston, and while shuttling around town I listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a great talk by Angjoo Kanazawa on building models for 4D video understanding for robotics at the MIT Robotics seminar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap5jFj04p1g

Next was "White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America" by Nancy Isenberg. This book focuses on the role of class in US history, starting in the colonial period and moving to the present day. Probably the most interesting chapters concern the colonial and early 20th century periods, with the founding of different southern colonies and their radically different approaches to white class differences and the role of eugenics in defining modern stereotypes about poor, rural white people standing out. It should be noted that this book mostly focuses on class as it applies to whoever was defined as "white" in a given time period, which is at times limiting and is often shockingly glib about the challenges that Black people, Native Americans, and other unfairly discriminated against groups faced. Still, the unique nature of this history demands to be read. Highly recommend https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/313197/white-trash-by-nancy-isenberg/

Last was "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City" by Matthew Desmond. Desmond delivers a raw, powerful look at poverty, housing, and the constricting injustice of the US legal and social system with a deep ethnography of extremely poor Milwaukee neighborhoods. Atop this he layers an accounting of the economic and legal system in the US to reveal the roots of the heart wrenching problems he describes, and in the epilogue also gives insight into how to conduct ethnographies effectively. Be warned, however, this is an extremely painful book to read. Highly recommend https://evictedbook.com/