New Books in British Studies
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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1776
Nancy Weiss Malkiel, ‘Keep the Damned Women Out...
Within the context of the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, elite institutions of higher education began to feel pressure to open their doors to women. In ‘Keep the Damned Women Out’: The Struggle for Coeducation (Princeton University Press,
42 min
1777
Dave Gosse, “Abolition and Plantation Managemen...
Dave Gosse’s recent book Abolition and Plantation Management in Jamaica, 1807-1838 (University of the West Indies Press, 2012), looks at a crucial period in Jamaican history. The time between the abolition of Britain’s slave trade in 1807 and the end o...
32 min
1778
Helen Rappaport, “Victoria: The Heart and Mind ...
The term historical fiction covers a wide range from what the mystery writer Josephine Tey once dubbed “history with conversation” to outright invention shading into fantasy. But behind every story set in the past lies the past itself,
55 min
1779
Owen McGee, “Arthur Griffith” (Merrion Press, 2...
As the founder of Sinn Fin and a leading architect of Irish independence, Arthur Griffith ranks as one of the founding fathers of modern Ireland. In his book Arthur Griffith (Merrion Press, 2015), Owen McGee offers a biography of the writer and patriot...
67 min
1780
David B. Goldstein and Amy L. Tigner, eds. “Cul...
Culinary Shakespeare: Staging Food and Drink in Early Modern England (Duquesne University Press, 2016) is a collection of essays that offers new dimensions for reading and understanding Shakespeare’s plays.
44 min
1781
Matt Houlbrook, “Prince of Tricksters: The Incr...
How should we understand the interwar years in Britain? In Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook (University of Chicago Press, 2016) Matt Houlbrook, Professor of Cultural History at the University of Birmingha...
40 min
1782
Richard Griffiths, “What Did You Do During the ...
During the mid- to late 1930s, a small but socially prominent group of right-wing Britons took a public stance in support of the Nazi regime in Germany. While many of them curtailed their activities upon Britain’s declaration of war in 1939,
50 min
1783
Michael Brown, “The Irish Enlightenment” (Harva...
Traditionally histories of the Enlightenment era exclude Ireland in the belief that the movement left little impression on developments. In The Irish Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2016), Michael Brown challenges this assumption,
49 min
1784
Julie Holcomb, “Moral Commerce: Quakers and the...
The question of how we should act when facing something gravely immoral is a difficult one. This is particularly true when that immorality touches upon our everyday life. Such was the issue that Quakers, and others,
58 min
1785
Tom Mills, “The BBC: Myth of a Public Service” ...
The BBC is often thought to be a great, impartial, defender of British values and society. In The BBC: Myth of a Public Service (Verso, 2016), Tom Mills, a lecturer in Sociology at Aston University, re-reads the history of the BBC to offer a more probl...
40 min
1786
Coll Thrush, “Indigenous London: Native Travele...
Coll Thrush’s new book is an imaginative and beautifully-written history of London framed by the experiences of indigenous travelers since early modernity. Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (Yale University Press,
63 min
1787
Kirsty Sedgman, “Locating the Audience: How Peo...
The value of the arts is a constant and vital question in contemporary culture. In Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre Wales (Intellect Books, 2016) Kirsty Sedgman, British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Bris...
39 min
1788
Colin Holmes, “Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The ...
During the Second World War millions of Britons tuned in nightly to hear the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw coming from Nazi Germany. Though the label was broadly applied to a number of English-speaking broadcasters,
50 min
1789
Coll Thrush, “Indigenous London: Native Travele...
Scholars have long treated cities as spaces in which indigenous people have little presence and less significance. This notion that urbanity and indignity stand at odds results from a potent mix of racist essentialism and the historical myth of progres...
47 min
1790
Marc Steinberg, “England’s Great Transformation...
Marc Steinberg is a professor of sociology at Smith College. His latest book, England’s Great Transformation: Law, Labor, and the Industrial Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2016) is a response to Karl Polyani’s vision of an emerging modern lab...
49 min
1791
John Bew, “Clement Attlee: The Man Who Made Mod...
As Labour Party leader, member of Winston Churchill’s governing coalition during the Second World War, and prime minister of the epochal postwar government that established the welfare state, Clement Attlee played a decisive role in the history of mode...
74 min
1792
Jack Hamilton, “Just Around Midnight: Rock and ...
In Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2016), Jack Hamilton examines major American and British recording artists of the 1960s to explain what happened during the decade to turn rock-n-roll white.
60 min
1793
Carina E. Ray, “Crossing the Color Line: Race, ...
In Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Ohio University Press, 2015), Carina E. Ray interrogates the intersections of race, marriage, gender and empire in this thought-provoking study that challenges t...
58 min
1794
Christopher Woolgar, “The Culture of Food in En...
Food was central to the lives of people in England during the Middle Ages in ways different than it is today. As Christopher Woolgar reveals in his book The Culture of Food in England, 1200-1500 (Yale University Press, 2016),
55 min
1795
Jon Stobart and Mark Rothery, “Consumption and ...
During the 18th century English country houses served an important function in their society as stages for the display of the status and power of the landed aristocracy. As Jon Stobart and Mark Rothery demonstrate in Consumption and the Country House(O...
56 min
1796
Marc-William Palen, “The ‘Conspiracy’ of Free T...
Accounts of late-nineteenth-century US expansionism commonly refer to an open-door empire and an imperialism spurred by belief in free trade. In his new book The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globaliza...
40 min
1797
William Cavert, “The Smoke of London: Energy an...
Air pollution may seem to be a problem uniquely of the modern age, but in fact it is one that has bedeviled people throughout history. In his book The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City (Cambridge University Press, 2016),
51 min
1798
Anne Mac Lellan, “Dorothy Stopford Price: Rebel...
Among the achievements of Irish medicine in the twentieth century was ending the persistent epidemic of tuberculosis throughout the island, and one of the central figures in that effort was Dorothy Stopford Price.
57 min
1799
Anders Ingram, “Writing the Ottomans: Turkish H...
You read a lot about “Orientalism,” that is, the often odd ways in which Westerners tried to understand predominantly Middle Eastern peoples and cultures. You don’t read a lot about good Western scholarship on predominately Middle Eastern peoples and c...
56 min
1800
Robert O’Kell, “Disraeli: The Romance of Politi...
Benjamin Disraeli was unique among British prime ministers in the 19th century in many ways, but perhaps none more so than for his career as a novelist. Whereas many scholars have treated Disraeli’s literary endeavors as an aberration born of financial...
73 min