"The focus on all forms of trauma except economic exploitation has helped to disguise the problem at the heart of neoliberalism."

Firebrand intellectual Catherine Liu is a professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, renowned for her incisive critiques of contemporary cultural and political dynamics. Her scholarly work delves into the intersections of critical theory, political economy, and cultural criticism.

Liu's most recent book is Traumatized: The New Politics of Public Suffering. In it, she argues that our current politics mistakes emotional display for political action. Her other publications include Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class (2021), a polemical examination of the class's role in perpetuating economic and social inequalities, and The American Idyll: Academic Anti-Elitism as Cultural Critique (2011), which explores the complexities of anti-elitism in American cultural politics.

"Liu’s comments in Virtue Hoarders on politics seem spot-on."—The Independent Review