New Books in Literary 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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2476
Paula T. Connolly, “Slavery in American Childre...
The “peculiar institution” upon which the US nation was founded is still rich for examination.Perhaps this is why it is a subject to which 21st century authors continue to return. In this exploration of slavery, Paula T. Connolly,
50 min
2477
Wen Jin, “Pluralist Universalism: An Asian Amer...
Wen Jin’s book, Pluralist Universalism: An Asian Americanist Critique of U.S. and Chinese Multiculturalisms (Ohio State Press, 2012), compares histories and modes of multiculturalism in China and the United States.
42 min
2478
Helena Gurfinkel, “Outlaw Fathers in Victorian ...
What is a father? In Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature: Queering Patriarchy (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2014), Helena Gurfinkel offers an insightful new vision of fatherhood through an engagement with English literature,
31 min
2479
Mark Dennis and Darren Middleton, eds., “Approa...
What does it mean to be a martyr? What does it mean to be an apostate? How should we understand people who choose one or the other? These are the questions asked by Shusaku Endo in his novel Silence, in which he tells the story of Japanese Catholics an...
63 min
2480
Robert P. Burns, “Kafka’s Law: ‘The Trial’ and ...
Professor Robert P. Burns of Northwestern University School of Law offers an insightful critique of the modern American criminal justice system in his new work Kafka’s Law: ‘The Trial’ and American Criminal Justice (University of Chicago Press 2014).
64 min
2481
Justin Martin, “Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and A...
Biography is, both etymologically and in its conventional forms, the writing of a life. But what is the role of place within that? And how do the stories of lives- some of them well known, others less so- realign when we see them through the lens of a ...
40 min
2482
Sarah M. Allen, “Shifting Stories: History, Gos...
Sarah M. Allen‘s new book looks at the literature of tales in eighth- and ninth-century China. Shifting Stories: History, Gossip, and Lore in Narratives from Tang Dynasty China (Harvard University Asia Center,
67 min
2483
Wilt Idema, “The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhu...
Wilt Idema‘s new book traces a story and its transformations through hundreds of years of Chinese literature. The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhuangzi to Lu Xun (Columbia University Press, 2014) collects and translates variations of the tale of Master Z...
63 min
2484
Tamara T. Chin, “Savage Exchange” (Harvard Univ...
Tamara Chin‘s new book is a tour de force and a must-read for anyone interested in early China, the history of economy, or inter-disciplinarity in the humanities. Focusing on the reign of Han Emperor Wu (r. 141-87 BCE),
67 min
2485
Susan Byrne, “Law and History in Cervantes’ Don...
Please listen to the fascinating conversation I had with Susan Byrne, Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Spanish at Yale University, about her new work, Law and History in Cervantes’ Don Quixote (University of Toro...
56 min
2486
R. Keller Kimbrough, “Wondrous Brutal Fictions:...
In his recent book, Wondrous Brutal Fictions: Eight Buddhist Tales from the Early Japanese Puppet Theater (Columbia University Press, 2013), R. Keller Kimbrough provides us with eight beautifully translated sekkyÅ and ko-jÅruri.
78 min
2487
Jenny Kaminer, “Women with a Thirst for Destruc...
Jenny Kaminer‘s new book, Women with a Thirst for Destruction: The Bad Mother in Russian Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2014) analyzes Russian myths of motherhood over time and in particular, the evolving myths of the figure of the “bad mother...
50 min
2488
Paola Iovene, “Tales of Futures Past: Anticipat...
Paola Iovene‘s new book is a beautiful exploration of visions of the future as they have shaped a range of texts, genres, and editorial practices in Chinese literature from the middle of the twentieth century through the beginning of the twenty-first c...
63 min
2489
Steven Shaviro, “The Universe of Things: On Spe...
Steven Shaviro‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging study of speculative realism, new materialism, and the ways in which those fields can speak to and be informed by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
61 min
2490
Steven Fielding, “A State of Play” (Bloomsbury ...
To understand contemporary politics we must understand how it is represented in fiction. This is the main argument in A State of Play: British Politics on Screen, Stage and Page, from Anthony Trollope to The Thick of It (Bloomsbury Academic,
61 min
2491
Joshua S. Mostow, “Courtly Visions: The Ise Sto...
In pre-modern Japan, Ise monogatari (also known as the Ise Stories or Tales of Ise) was considered to be one of the three most important works of literature in the Japanese language. Joshua S. Mostow‘s new book focuses on the reception and appropriatio...
65 min
2492
Beth Driscoll, “The New Literary Middlebrow: Re...
It is a cliche to suggest we are what we read, but it is also an important insight. In The New Literary Middlebrow: Readers and Tastemaking in the Twenty First Century (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2014), Beth Driscoll, from University of Melbourne,
39 min
2493
Melek Ortabasi, “The Undiscovered Country” (Har...
Melek Ortabasi‘s new book explores the work of Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), a writer, folk scholar, “eccentric, dominating crackpot,” “brilliant, versatile iconoclast” and much more. The Undiscovered Country: Text, Translation,
67 min
2494
Wai-yee Li, “Women and National Trauma in Late ...
Wai-yee Li‘s new book explores writing around the Ming-Qing transition in seventeenth-century China, paying careful attention to the relationships of history and literature in writing by women, about women, and/or in a feminine voice.
64 min
2495
Harleen Singh, “The Rani of Jhansi: Gender, His...
The Rani of Jhansi was and is many things to many people. In her beautifully written book The Rani of Jhansi: Gender, History, and Fable in India (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Harleen Singh explores four representations of the famous warrior quee...
49 min
2496
Bridget Conor, “Screenwriting: Creative labor a...
Bridget Conor’s new book, Screenwriting: Creative Labor and Professional Practice (Routledge, 2014), looks closely at the creative practice and profession of screenwriting for film and television in the US and UK.
48 min
2497
Lawrence Lipking, “What Galileo Saw: Imagining ...
Lawrence Lipking‘s new book, What Galileo Saw: Imagining the Scientific Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2014) examines the role of imagination and creativity in the seventeenth century developments that have come to be known as the Scientific Rev...
67 min
2498
Shengqing Wu, “Modern Archaics: Continuity and ...
Shengqing Wu’s gorgeous new book begins by exploring the image of the treasure pagoda to introduce readers to an aesthetics of ornamental lyricism in Chinese poetry at the turn of the twentieth-century. Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the...
66 min
2499
Nabil Matar, “Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings o...
In Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall and Progress of Mahometanism (Columbia University Press, 2014), Nabil Matar masterfully edits an important piece of scholarship from seventeenth-century England by scholar and physician,
54 min
2500
William Chittick, “Divine Love: Islamic Literat...
Where does love come from and where will it lead us? Throughout the years various answers have been given to these questions. In Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God (Yale University Press, 2013), William Chittick,
60 min