New Books in Intellectual History
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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3076
Peter Sahlins, “1668: The Year of the Animal in...
Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture in the first decades of Louis XIV’s reign in France. Focusing on the years in and around 1668,
4 min
3077
Samuel England, “Medieval Empires and the Cultu...
In his thrilling and sparkling new book, Medieval Empires and the Cultures of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Samuel England, Assistant Professor of Arabic at the University of Wisconsin-M...
35 min
3078
Frances Kneupper, “The Empire at the End of Tim...
What sounds like the title of a Hollywood movie is actually a result of meticulous historical research. Frances Courtney Kneupper‘s new book The Empire at the End of Time: Identity and Reform in Late Medieval German Prophecy (Oxford University Press,
57 min
3079
Ronald P. Loftus, “The Turn Against the Modern:...
Taoka Reiun (1870-1912) was a literary critic and thinker who was active from the early 1890s in Meiji period Japan. Not satisfied with the meaning of bunmei kaika (“civilization and enlightenment”), the trajectory that the government had mapped out fo...
72 min
3080
A. James McAdams, “Vanguard of the Revolution: ...
Is there a difference between the Communist Party as an idea and the Communist Party in practice? A. James McAdams thinks so and takes the global approach to history to write a political and intellectual history of the Communist party.
44 min
3081
Kyla Schuller, “The Biopolitics of Feeling: Rac...
Beginning with a discussion about Black Lives Matter may seem like an unlikely place to start a book about nineteenth century science and culture. However, by contrasting Black lives with White feelings, Kyla Schuller sets up the central conflict of he...
1 min
3082
William A. Edmundson, “John Rawls: Reticent Soc...
John Rawls is easily the most celebrated and influential political philosopher of the 20th Century, and his impact remains remarkably strong today. The central concepts with which his theory of justice begins are now components of the philosophical ve...
62 min
3083
Yoav Di-Capua, “No Exit: Arab Existentialism, J...
Yoav Di-Capua‘s new book, No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre and Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2018) is narrative intellectual history at its best: a tale of friendship and betrayal,
41 min
3084
Douglas L. Winiarski, “Darkness Falls on the La...
Douglas L. Winiarski is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond and winner of the 2018 Bancroft Prize in American history for his book Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth Century N...
61 min
3085
Ethan L. Menchinger, “The First of the Modern O...
Ethan L. Menchinger‘s The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif (Cambridge University Press, 2017) traces the life and career of Ahmed Vasif (ca. 1735-1806), a prominent diplomat, historian,
32 min
3086
Catherine Soussloff, “Foucault on Painting” (U ...
In Foucault on Painting (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), Catherine Soussloff discusses an area of Foucault’s development that has remained largely overlooked: his engagement with painting. Indeed Foucault, we learn,
34 min
3087
John Munro, “The Anticolonial Front: The Africa...
John Munro’s new book, The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization (Cambridge University Press, 2017) is a transnational study that traces the persistence and continuities of Black radicalism from the end of ...
46 min
3088
Katharine Gerbner, “Christian Slavery: Conversi...
Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In her recent book, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Pr...
45 min
3089
Paul Cartledge, “Democracy: A Life” (Oxford UP,...
The Western concept of democracy has a lineage dating back to the classical world. Paul Cartledge’s book Democracy: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2016) details its origins in ancient Greece and its evolution of it as a theory over the course of the ...
62 min
3090
Sam Lebovic, “Free Speech and Unfree News: The ...
Appeals to “press freedom” can be heard from across the political spectrum. But what those appeals mean varies dramatically. Sam Lebovic, in his excellent new book, Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America (Harvard Universit...
55 min
3091
Barry Wimpfheimer, “The Talmud: A Biography” (P...
In The Talmud: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2018), Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, associate professor of religious studies and law at Northwestern University, introduces the reader to the Babylonian Talmud,
52 min
3092
Dan Bendarz, “East German Intellectuals and the...
In his new book, East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany: An Ethnographic View (Palgrave 2017), Dan Bednarz, Assistant Professor at Bristol Community College, examines the impact of German unification on East German intellectuals.
58 min
3093
Mira Beth Wasserman, “Jews, Gentiles, and Other...
In Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals: The Talmud After the Humanities (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), Mira Beth Wasserman undertakes a close reading of Avoda Zara, arguably the Talmud’s most scandalous tractate,
43 min
3094
Omina El Shakry, “The Arabic Freud: Psychoanaly...
Often, when writing the intellectual history of the Middle East, we make assumptions about the influence of ideas from other places on the Middle East itself. We assume what ideas are being adapted in their entirety and not necessarily as challenged an...
48 min
3095
Michael Brenner, “In Search of Israel: The Hist...
In his new book, In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2018), Professor Michael Brenner, a historian of Jews and of Israel who teaches both at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at American University in Washi...
29 min
3096
Keisha N. Blain, “Set the World on Fire: Black ...
Keisha N. Blain teaches African American and gender and women’s history at the University of Pittsburg. Her book Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press,
62 min
3097
Gary Dorrien, “The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Boi...
The black social gospel–formulated and given voice by abolitionists and post-reconstruction Black men and women–took the United States by storm in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Black Christians were not the only ones involved in the black...
65 min
3098
Marcella Corsi et al., “Classical Economics Tod...
I met in Rome, at Sapienza University, with two of the three editors of a great new book in economics. Marcella Corsi is professor of economics at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and editor of the International Review of Sociology.
38 min
3099
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, “Indian Muslim Minori...
In her fascinating and path paving new book, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels and Jihad (I. B. Tauris, 2017), Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont reorients our understa...
35 min
3100
Alexus McLeod, “Philosophy of the Ancient Maya:...
The ancient Maya are popularly known for their calendar, but their concept of time and the metaphysics surrounding that conception are not. In Philosophy of the Ancient Maya: Lords of Time (Lexington Books, 2018),
64 min