#AcademicRunPlaylist - 6/15/25

Happy Father's Day! I took the opportunity to run to our family gathering today, and along the way I listened to books for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was "Female Masculinity" by Jack Halberstam. This is probably the most accessible queer theory book I've ever read, and Halberstam explores masculinity and gender categories more broadly from philosophical, sociological, and artistic lenses. This includes an excellent, nuanced critique of survey research in this area.

This book is very much of its time. Originally published in the late 1990s, on top of cultural references that will only be understandable to those who grew up then (✋), with copious references to GoldenEye, Aliens, etc. As a totally meaningless aside, while Halberstam says that in Aliens Vasquez is the first to die, she is in fact the LAST to die, albeit in a tie with Gorman. More importantly, the analysis of trans identities feel extremely dated, and without analysis of developments in the 21st century the book is certainly less relevant than it was at publication.

Still, this is an essential book for understanding gender categories and their myriad meanings and instantiations in the US. Highly recommend https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019-06-08_5cfba24a7c20f_judith-halberstam-female-masculinity-2.pdf

Last was "The Idea of the Brain" by Matthew Cobb. This book does double duty, analyzing the long history of how people have understood the brain and mind with a scientific history orientation and also explaining the scientific theories and experiments underpinning modern neuroscience. Cobb shows how people have always compared the brain to whatever was the new technological hotness - telegraphs, telephones, batteries, computers, and now AI - and of course I also immensely enjoyed the absolute savaging of those claiming that neural networks (essentially built off one understanding of neurons in the 40s) and fMRI data are good representations of the brain. For those familiar with neuroscience concepts part 2 will be mostly review, but with Cobb's connections with previous theories it is still insightful. Highly recommend https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/matthew-cobb/the-idea-of-the-brain/9781541646858/