In her new book, Philosophy and Dissidence in Cold War Europe (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016), Assistant Professor of Philosophy Aspen E. Brinton examines the ways Cold War dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe turned to the past for inspiration in order to change and transcend their present entrapment, contributing to a more general narrative about how to change one’s way of acting by altering one’s way of thinking. Brinton argues for a view of dissent as an existential search for mutual understanding and recognition, showing how dissidents’ ideas contribute to current conversations in political theory and philosophy about thinking and action. She was recently interviewed by Jonas Barciauskas of BC Libraries.