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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Society & Culture
History
3276
Meredith K. Ray, “Daughters of Alchemy: Women a...
According to sixteenth-century writer Moderata Fonte, the untapped potential of women to contribute to the liberal arts was “buried gold.” Exploring the work of Fonte and that of many other incredible women, Meredith K.
61 min
3277
Kocku von Stuckrad, “The Scientification of Rel...
Science and religion are often paired as diametric opposites. However, the boundaries of these two fields were not always as clear as they seem to be today. In The Scientification of Religion: An Historical Study of Discursive Change,
53 min
3278
James A. Secord, “Visions of Science: Books and...
James A. Secord‘s new book is both deeply enlightening and a pleasure to read. Emerging from the 2013 Sandars Lectures in Bibliography at the Cambridge University Library, Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (Universi...
64 min
3279
Gary Wilder, “Freedom Time: Negritude, Decoloni...
Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Un...
59 min
3280
M. Alper Yalcinkaya, “Learned Patriots: Debatin...
What were Ottomans talking about when they talked about science? In posing and answering that question (spoiler: they were talking about people), M. Alper Yalcinkaya‘s new book Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State,
69 min
3281
Kevin M. Schultz, “Buckley and Mailer: The Diff...
In Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship that Shaped the Sixties (W.W. Norton, 2015), Kevin M. Schultz has given us a lively and colorful narrative history that captures the character of two complex men and the times in which they lived.
67 min
3282
Marion Holmes Katz, “Women in the Mosque: A His...
Recently, there have been various debates within the Muslim community over women’s mosque attendance. While contemporary questions of modern society structure current conversations, this question, ‘may a Muslim woman go to the mosque,
67 min
3283
Emily Kuriloff, “Contemporary Psychoanalysis an...
In her new book, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Third Reich: History, Memory, Tradition (Routledge, 2013), Emily Kuriloff details a dimension of psychoanalytic history that has never been so extensively documented: The impact of the Shoah on the n...
51 min
3284
Amy Kittelstrom, “The Religion of Democracy: Se...
Amy Kittelstrom is an associate professor of history at Sonoma State University. In her book The Religion of Democracy: Seven Liberals and the American Moral Tradition (Penguin Press, 2015), Kittelstrom gives us profiles of seven individual and their c...
64 min
3285
Ananya Vajpeyi, “Righteous Republic: The Politi...
Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India (Harvard University Press, 2012) by Ananya Vajpeyi is a rethinking of the self in self-rule, as understood in the ideas generated and reworked by five leading figures of the Indian independe...
67 min
3286
Thomas Kemple, “Intellectual Work and the Spiri...
Thomas Kemple‘s new book is an extraordinarily thoughtful invitation to approach Max Weber (1864-1920) as a performer, and to experience Weber’s work by attending to his spoken and written voice. Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s ...
69 min
3287
Andrew Cayton, “Love in the Time of Revolution”...
Andrew Cayton is a distinguished professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In his book Love in the Time of Revolution: Transatlantic Literary Radicalism and Historical Change (University of North Carolina Press,
60 min
3288
Carol Faulkner, “Lucretia Mott’s Heresy” (U Pen...
Carol Faulkner is Professor of History at Syracuse University. Her book Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) is a beautifully written biography of the abolitionist a...
62 min
3289
Leilah Danielson, “American Gandhi” (U Pennsylv...
Leilah Danielson is an Associate Professor of History at Northern Arizona University and author of American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
61 min
3290
Trygve Throntveit, “William James and the Quest...
William James (1842-1910) is one of the United States’ most far-reaching thinkers. His impact on philosophy, psychology, and religious studies is well documented, yet few scholars have considered James’ impact on the area of ethics and political though...
60 min
3291
A. Mark Smith, “From Sight to Light: The Passag...
A. Mark Smith‘s new book is a magisterial history of optics over the course of two millennia. From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern Optics (University of Chicago Press, 2015) suggests that the transition from ancient toward modern opt...
60 min
3292
Nick Wilding, "Galileo's Idol: Gianfrancesco Sa...
An interview with Nick Wilding
70 min
3293
Nick Wilding, “Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sa...
Nick Wilding‘s new book is brilliant, thoughtful, and an absolute pleasure to read. Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and The Politics of Knowledge (University of Chicago Press, 2014) takes an unusual approach to understanding Galileo and his conte...
70 min
3294
Donna J. Drucker, “The Classification of Sex: A...
Donna J. Drucker is a guest professor at Darmstadt Technical University in Germany. Her book The Classification of Sex: Alfred Kinsey and the Organization of Knowledge (University of Pittsburg Press, 2014) is an in-depth and detailed study of Kinsey’s ...
59 min
3295
Sophia Rose Arjana, “Muslims in the Western Ima...
In Muslims in the Western Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2015), Sophia Rose Arjana explores a variety of creative productions–including art, literature, film–in order to tell a story not about how Muslims construct their own identities but rathe...
62 min
3296
Udi Greenberg, “The Weimar Century: German Emig...
American policymakers and scholars alike have looked to the rapid transformation of Germany, specifically West Germany, from a defeated Nazi state into a thriving democracy as one of the most successful postwar reconstructions of the twentieth century....
47 min
3297
Orit Halpern, “Beautiful Data: A History of Vis...
The second half of the twentieth century saw a radical transformation in approaches to recording and displaying information. Orit Halpern‘s new book traces the emergence of the “communicative objectivity” that resulted from this shift and produced new ...
73 min
3298
Tim Lacy, “The Dream of a Democratic Culture: M...
Tim Lacy is an assistant professor and academic advisor at Loyola University Chicago. His specialties are intellectual history, cultural history, and the history of education. He is co-founder of both the U.S.
65 min
3299
Kimberly A. Hamlin, “From Eve to Evolution: Dar...
Kimberly A. Hamlin is an associate professor in American Studies and history at Miami University in Oxford Ohio. Her book from Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age in America (University of Chicago Press, 2014),
64 min
3300
Meir Shahar and John Kieschnick, “India in the ...
In India in the Chinese Imagination: Myth, Religion, and Thought (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), eleven scholars (including editors John Kieschnick and Meir Shahar) examine the Chinese reception of Indian ideas and myth,
59 min