brian
francis
culkin
CULTURAL CRITICISM
Postscript on Boxing explores the effect of contemporary media and the postindustrial economy on the sport of boxing. Looking at both the sport's historical development and its present day status, this book weaves compelling stories, philosophy, and cultural reflection into a unique and thought provoking work on sport and society.
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There is no such thing as Boston explores contemporary urban gentrification, both as a universal concept and how it has affected the city of Boston in particular.
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The heroin epidemic in America is an emblematic pathology of neoliberal globalization. Addiction today cannot be understood only as an individual affliction but as a collective sickness tied to the collapse of community, technological intrusion into public and biological life, and the psychological devastation of 21st-century America. What follows is a cognitive map tracing the crisis to the ideological and material power of global capitalism.
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The Meaning of Trump is an ideological critique that sees the election of Donald Trump as a completely natural progression to the general trajectory of digitized technologies, neoliberalism, and a new breed of financialized capitalism; destructive global forces that know no party affiliation or national boundary. Although Donald Trump is undoubtedly the symptom that has exploded to the surface after nearly four decades of failed policies and broken promises by both Republicans and Democrats alike, his election can also be seen as an existential fork in the road for both the United States and even humanity itself.
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Drawing on the unique vision of the French anthropologist Rene Girard, Brian Francis Culkin offers a new and provocative critique against the structure of 21st-century capitalism and its relationship to desire in the age of COVID-19. Using critical theory, literature, and the New Testament, Rene Girard and COVID-19 is a timely and important book about both the dangers and promises on the horizon for Planet Earth in the 21st century.
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What is Cancel Culture? How does it operate within 21st century American and global society? For Brian Francis Culkin, far from being new, cancel culture is simply the contemporary iteration of basic sacrificial logic that we find operative throughout human history. Drawing on the anthropology of Rene Girard, the playwright Henrik Ibsen, and a series of examples in our current cultural atmosphere, An Essay on Cancel Culture is a short but powerful excavation of a contemporary phenomenon.
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Fragments of Boston is a series of short essays, fragments, and interventions written by Brian Francis Culkin between 2015-2019 about contemporary gentrification, both as a global phenomenon and how it has specifically affected the city of Boston, Massachusetts.
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A short book that explores the relationship between the sport of boxing and cinema. Drawing on films like On the Waterfront, Million Dollar Baby, and Fight Club, the shift between industrialization and capitalist globalization is put into a unique theoretical framework in which boxing themed film is used to illustrate the fade of both American boxing and industry. The book concludes with a small sample of the author's boxing photography.
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An introduction to the thought and writing of Brian Francis Culkin.
Brian Francis Culkin is a writer, cultural theorist, and film director.
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The Ayahuasca Dialogues is a transcribed collection of conversations between Ricardo Amaringo and Brian Francis Culkin. This dynamic and compelling discussion engages topics diverse as Shipibo cosmology, the structure of contemporary capitalism, digital technologies, trauma, globalization, and the future of humanity.
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In their new book, Hypermodernity & The End of the World, John David Ebert, Brian Francis Culkin and Michael Aaron Kamins map out the cartography of Hypermodernity, an epoch which the authors demarcate as having come into being in 1995 with the advent of the Internet.
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For Brian Francis Culkin, gentrification is not simply the operation of urban real estate being redeveloped for a new professional class, it is rather a complex and multifaceted process that speaks to the transformation of human life itself in the era of 21st-century globalized capitalism.Conversations on Gentrification is a riveting and thought-provoking conversation that explores the dynamics of contemporary gentrification in both Boston, Massachusetts and as a universal process that is now radically transforming cities across the world.
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This is not a book only to read, but rather a book to watch. Accompanying this book is a series of video essays, collages of image and spoken word that attempt to further bring out the meaning of what has been written. An experimental text, Video Essays is an attempt to somehow link our Guttenbergian past with the new media environment of our present moment.
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The Spanish translation of The Meaning of Trump.
Translated by the Chilean writer and editor Javier Bustos Troncoso.
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Spontaneous Reflections is a compilation of notes, fragments, and posts that chronicle real-time developments in global culture (2016-2018) from the viewpoint of Brian Francis Culkin. From school shootings to film reviews to Artificial Intelligence to American politics - nothing is off limits for critical reflection and the search for meaning.
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Spontaneous Reflections: Volume II (2019-2021) is a compilation of notes, fragments, and posts that chronicle real-time developments in global culture and politics from the viewpoint of Bran Francis Culkin.
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Available for order Summer 2026
PLAYS
After losing his job, Michael Barre takes temporary work at a bakery in which he has a distant family relation. What follows is a story about technology, the absence of community, and the recovery of lost roots in the context of hypermodern America. Bread is a play about the struggle to maintain our humanity in a world that is increasingly set against it.
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Written in the form of a screenplay, The Phone Thief is a story of two boys who spend a day tracking down a stolen cell phone. A narrative about the effect of technology on human relationships, The Phone Thief offers a penetrating insight into the state of contemporary life in the 21st century.
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Available for order Summer 2026
Not available on Amazon.com
Only available by direct order from author, or in select Peruvian bookstores.
In his first astrology book, Brian Francis Culkin presents two compelling essays that connect the timeless archetypal structure of astrology with the cultural flux of the 21st century as we stand at the threshold of the Aquarian Age.
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Reading the Sabian Symbols explores the profound underlying meaning of each zodiacal degree and its distinctive symbolic properties. By developing a fundamental theory of the degree-unit and examining the natal charts of various historical figures, this work offers a unique contemporary perspective of astrological theory and practice.
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Available for order in Summer 2026
Available for order in Summer 2026
FILM
A full-length documentary written and directed by Brian Francs Culkin.
Voices is a documentary short, written and directed by Brian Francis Culkin, that explores the gap between trauma and healing; the spoken and the unspeakable; and the refugee and the citizen.
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Written and directed by Brian Francis Culkin, produced by Norman Lang, and photographed by Jabari Canada, Now, Passage is a short film starring Jimmy LeBlanc (Spotlight, Gone Baby Gone, Stronger), Ted Ndinya, and James McCarthy.
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POETRY
Available for order 2027