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
Menachem Fisch, “Creatively Undecided: Toward a...
Thomas Kuhn upset both scientists and philosophers of science when he argued that transitions from one scientific framework (or “paradigm”) to another were irrational: the change was like a religious conversion experience rather than a reasoned shift f...
64 min
3077
Didem Havlioglu, “Mihri Hatun: Performance, Gen...
Mihri Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History (Syracuse University Press, 2017) by Didem Havlioglu is at once an intellectual history and biography of sorts of Mihri Hatun, a fifteenth century Ottoman poet.
30 min
3078
Richard Candida Smith, “Improvised Continent: P...
Richard Candida Smith’s new book Improvised Continent: Pan-American and Cultural Exchange (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), offers a richly detailed cultural history of pan-Americanism and how it was propagated among elites and popular audience...
56 min
3079
Vivian Liska, “German-Jewish Thought and Its Af...
In German-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy (Indiana University Press, 2016), Vivian Liska, Professor of German Literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp in Belgium as well as a Distinguish...
26 min
3080
Cynthia Baker, “Jew” (Rutgers UP, 2017)
What is the significance of Jew? How has this word come to have such varied and charged meanings? Who has (and has not) used it, and why? Cynthia Baker explores these questions and more in her new book Jew,
67 min
3081
Daniel B. Schwartz, “The First Modern Jew: Spin...
Benedito/Baruch/Benedict Spinoza (1623-1677) lived at the crossroads of Dutch, scholastic, and Jewish worlds. Excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam at 23, his works would later be put on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books.
58 min
3082
David Armitage, “Civil Wars: A History in Ideas...
Civil wars are among the most intractable conflicts in the world. Yet exactly distinguishes civil war from other types of armed struggle? In his book Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (Vintage Books, 2017), David Armitage examines the evolution of the con...
39 min
3083
Bonny Ibhawoh, “Human Rights in Africa” (Cambri...
In his new book, Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Bonny Ibhawoh examines the discourse of human rights in Africa. He challenges some of the dominant narratives that focus on ruthless violators and benevolent activists.
92 min
3084
Marshall Poe, “How to Read a History Book: The ...
What is the history of a “history book”? In How to Read a History Book: The Hidden History Of History (Zero Books, 2018), Marshall Poe, founder and Editor-In-Chief of the New Books Network, tells the story of why and how we have the “history books” we ...
44 min
3085
Jeffrey Stewart, “The New Negro: The Life of Al...
Through his work as a scholar and critic, Alain Locke redefined African American culture and its place in American life. Jeffrey Stewart‘s book The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford University Press,
54 min
3086
Shinshu Roberts, “Being-Time: A Practitioner’s ...
In her new book, Being-Time: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji (Wisdom Publications, 2018), Shinshu Roberts focuses on the practical study of the inner self and perception of all phenomena through the famously complex work of Dogen Zenji...
45 min
3087
Larry Wolff, “The Singing Turk” (Stanford UP, 2...
In The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon (Stanford University Press, 2016), Larry Wolff takes us into that distinctly European art form, the opera,
41 min
3088
Seth Markle, “A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzani...
Today we talked to Seth Markle about his book, A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974, published by Michigan State University Press in 2017 as part of the Ruth Simms Hamilton African Diaspo...
50 min
3089
Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides’ ‘Guide of the Perplex...
Alfred Ivry‘s book, Maimonides’ ‘Guide of the Perplexed’: A Philosophical Guide (University of Chicago, 2016) is the only modern commentary in English to explicate Maimonides’ summa The Guide of the Perplexed in its entirety. In so doing,
63 min
3090
Richard D. Brown, “Self-Evident Truths: Contest...
Richard D. Brown’s new book Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2017) offers a deft examination of the idea enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equ...
59 min
3091
Michael Ruse, “On Purpose” (Princeton UP, 2017)
Can we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Immanuel Kant thought we were stuck with purpose, and while Darwin’s theory of natural selection profoundly shook the idea, it was unable to kill it. In fact,
55 min
3092
Marlene Daut, “Baron de Vastey and the Origins ...
In Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave, 2017), Marlene Daut helps to resurrect the life and writings of one of Haiti’s most influential thinkers. Baron de Vastey is perhaps best known as Henri Christophe’s secretary in ...
47 min
3093
Sam Rosenfeld, “The Polarizers: Postwar Archite...
In our hyper polarized world, it is easy to assume that this is a natural state of being, the result of natural shifts in politics. In Sam Rosenfeld‘s new book, The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era (University of Chicago Press,
22 min
3094
Peter Hempenstall, “Truth’s Fool: Derek Freeman...
The debate over Margaret Mead’s and Derek Freeman’s conflicting ethnographic reports has gone on for decades. While no longer a hot topic, Mead-Freeman stands as a testament to the power and, sometimes, imprecision of social scientific inquiry.
37 min
3095
Mark Sedgwick, “Western Sufism: From the Abbasi...
In his work, Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age (Oxford University Press, 2017), Mark Sedgwick maps the ideational processes that have led to the development of contemporary western Sufism. Sedgwick showcases how Neoplatonism influenced A...
38 min
3096
Nick Montfort, “The Future” (MIT, 2017)
Popular culture provides many visions of the future. From The Jetsons to Futurama, Black Mirror to Minority Report, Western culture has predicted a future predicated on innovations in technology. In his new book for the MIT Essential Knowledge Series,
31 min
3097
Emily C. Nacol, “An Age of Risk: Politics and E...
Emily C. Nacol has written a fascinating interrogation of the idea of risk, the concept of vulnerability, and the evolution of probabilistic thinking as conceived of and explored by four of the preeminent British thinkers of the seventeenth and eightee...
39 min
3098
Noam Zadoff, “Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to J...
Noam Zadoff begins his biography of Gershon Scholem, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars and an equally perplexing intellectual, at the point where Scholem ends his own autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth—with his arriv...
72 min
3099
Lena Wetenkamp, “Europe Narrated, Contextualize...
Lena Wetenkamp‘s Europe Narrated, Contextualized and Remembered: The Discourse of ‘Europe’ in Contemporary German Literature (Europa erzhalt, verortet, erinnert: Europa-Diskurse in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur (Koenigshausen and Neumann,
30 min
3100
Gregory Laski, “Untimely Democracy: The Politic...
Gregory Laski approaches the concept of democracy in his text, Untimely Democracy: The Politics of Progress after Slavery (Oxford University Press, 2018) from a variety of dimensions and perspectives, integrating the concept of temporality to considera...
48 min