Humiliation pervades our politics, from images of stripped Palestinian men in Gaza to mocking chants at MAGA rallies. It suffuses pictures and videos, speaks through bodies as well as words, and is expressed by those with too much power as well as by those with too little. In Driven to Their Knees, Roxanne Euben takes readers from conflicts in the Arabic-speaking world to America’s divided public square, advancing a theory of humiliation rooted in the ways people articulate and enact it. Euben analyzes some of the most conspicuous yet least studied Arabic expressions of humiliation, drawing on sources ranging from Qurʾānic commentary by Islamists to videos, poetry, songs, and tweets from the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary Politics (Princeton UP, 2025) reveals what the language of humiliation says—and also how it works. This groundbreaking book shows how humiliation expresses the imposition of impotence by those with undeserved power, and the way it converts relations of power into crises of virility. Humiliation rhetoric defines both the humiliated and the humiliator and issues an urgent call for a remedy in the viscerally charged language of emasculation. For Donald Trump and Usama bin Laden alike, this means driving their enemy to his knees for all to see, and then boasting about it to compound the degradation. But for others, humiliation galvanizes their struggle to “stand erect,” uniting them in a refusal to be bowed low. Humiliation is not just about power but is itself a powerful language that does far more than reflect contemporary politics. The language of humiliation remakes the very world in which we live.

Roxanne L. Euben is the Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Her books include Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge; Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism; and (with Muhammad Qasim Zaman) Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-Banna to Bin Laden (all Princeton).

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.

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Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026) is an edited collection exploring utopias ad dystopias in films and literature. It challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia.

The book brings together film, literary, and utopian studies scholars from across the world. As an interdisciplinary collection, it covers a wide range of utopias and dystopias, from those of visionaries as varied as William Morris and George Lucas to such fresh new and distinctive voices like Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and N. K. Jemisin.

Contributors dismantle myths about utopian and dystopian film, literature, and television. Several chapters analyse the nature of utopian and dystopian fiction and its important relationship to our present moment. What's the future of utopia? What does it mean to be a utopia today? Do we still need the warnings of dystopia?

Whether through ecocritical work, work aimed at decolonizing utopian studies, debates about our relationship with technology and the nonhuman, forms of utopian hope and pessimism, or new thinking about cinematic and literary techniques and production, the essays offer fresh insight into the subject area and something to interest any reader.

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Kabwe, Zambia: Sali, a working mother of three, stands trial for the murder of her husband, Kasunga. The prosecutor claims Sali shot him after a heated fight in their bedroom. There are no witnesses. Sali pleads not guilty.

But her story does not begin with a gun. It begins fourteen years earlier--with her rebellion against the pressure to find a husband, her affair with a wealthy married man called Doc, and her discovery that she's pregnant on the same day of Doc's unexpected death.To avoid the shame of being an unwed mother, Sali accepts Kasunga's proposal, and finds herself suddenly thrust into the shipikisha club: her society's expectations that it is a wife's duty to endure. Over the years, Sali navigates her husband's infidelities and alcohol-filled nights, their money troubles, and her postpartum depression in silence. Until the day she speaks her mind, and Kasunga puts a gun in her face.

The trial is a national scandal. Many are called to testify--the maid, Kasunga's mother, and Ntashé, Sali's fifteen-year-old daughter. Even after Sali's diary is dissected and laid bare for all to see, Sali calls no witnesses to her defense. With Kasunga gone, only Sali will ever know the truth. But is the truth enough?

Told through the rotating perspectives of Sali, Ntashé, and Sali's mother Peggy, The Shipikisha Club (Cassava Republic Press, 2026) is a riveting story of gender politics in Zambia and the world at large--a must-read for fans of Peace Adzo Medie, Abi Daré, and Tayari P. Jones.

Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and award-winning editor and writer, known for her novel The Mourning Bird and her collection of short stories titled Obligations to the Wounded. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in law, as well as a master's in fine arts. She is currently pursuing a PhD in gender, women and sexuality studies at the University of Minnesota.

Jessie Cohen holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in African History. She is the Editor-In-Chief of the New Books Network.

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