Book Talk: White Power and American Neoliberal Culture

Please join us for a book talk and discussion by Patricia Ventura (Spellman College) and Edward K. Chan (Waseda University) where they will discuss their book, White Power and American Neoliberal Culture (University of California Press, 2023) at Alexander Library, Pane Room 157 (First Floor) on Monday, November 3, 2025, at 5pm.

Please feel free to share widely with interested faculty and students!

White Power and American Neoliberal Culture speaks to the urgency of the present moment by uncovering and examining the ideologies that led us here. Working through sources such as white terrorist manifestos, white power utopian fiction, neoliberal think tank reports, and neoconservative policy statements, Patricia Ventura and Edward K. Chan analyze the conjunction of current forms of white supremacy and racial capitalism. Short and accessible, this timely book argues that white extremist worldviews—and the violence they provoke—have converged with a radical economic and social agenda to shape daily life in the United States, especially by enshrining the male-dominated white family as the ideal of national identity.

Through insightful observation and critical dissection, Ventura and Chan paint a striking portrait of how these forces enable each other, perpetuating social injustice and inequity. Patricia Ventura is Associate Professor of English at Spelman College in Atlanta. Her previous work includes Neoliberal Culture: Living with American Neoliberalism. Edward K. Chan is Professor of American Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo. His previous work includes The Racial Horizon of Utopia: Unthinking the Future of Race in Late Twentieth-Century American Utopian Novels. Together the two coedited Race and Utopian Desire in American Literature and Society.