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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2551
Christopher Pizzino, “Arresting Development: Co...
There’s a common myth about the history of comic books and strips. It’s the idea that the medium languished for decades as a sort of time-wasting hobby for children, but now has redeemed itself and can be appreciated even by the literary.
31 min
2552
Gleb Tsipursky, “Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumpt...
Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945-1970 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) offers a compelling investigation of Soviet leisure culture. Gleb Tsipursky undertakes an unexpected approach t...
54 min
2553
Meredith K. Ray, “Margherita Sarrocchi’s Letter...
Meredith K. Ray’s new book contextualizes and translates a range of seventeenth-century letters, mostly between Margherita Sarrocchi (1560-1617) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), that collectively offer a fascinating window into the correspondence of tw...
59 min
2554
Glyne Griffith, “The BBC and the Development of...
The BBC radio program “Caribbean Voices” aired for fifteen years and introduced writers like George Lamming, Louise Bennett, Sam Selvon and others to listeners on both sides of the Atlantic. Glyne Griffith’s The BBC and the Development of Anglophone Ca...
48 min
2555
Andre Carrington, “Speculative Blackness: The F...
Have you ever watched a futuristic movie and wondered if there will actually be any black people in the future? Have you ever been surprised, disappointed, or concerned with the lack of diversity demonstrated in many science fiction stories?
64 min
2556
Benjamin Schreier, “The Impossible Jew: Identit...
What is Jewish about Jewish American literature? While the imaginative possibilities are numerous many scholars approach literary products with an established notion of a Jewish identity before they reach their subjects.
44 min
2557
Maria G. Rewakowicz, “Literature, Exile, Alteri...
In Literature, Exile, Alterity: The New York Group of Ukrainian Poets (Academic Studies Press, 2014), Maria G. Rewakowicz explores a unique collaboration of the poets residing in the United States and writing poetry in the Ukrainian language.
61 min
2558
David Rosen and Aaron Santesso, “The Watchman i...
“Surveillance and literature, as kindred practices, have light to shed on each other.” When David Rosen and Aaron Santesso considered the discipline of surveillance studies in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001,
66 min
2559
Randy Olson, “Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why...
Randy Olson, author of Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story (University of Chicago Press, 2015), has an unusual background. He is a Harvard-trained biologist and former tenured professor who resigned from his academic post to earn a de...
61 min
2560
Stephen Brockmann, “The Writers’ State: Constru...
Stephen Brockmann’s The Writers’ State: Constructing East German Literature, 1945-1959 (Camden House, 2015) introduces readers to a specific atmosphere–political, cultural, and historical–that accompanied the emergence of East German literature from 19...
50 min
2561
Richard Jean So, “Transpacific Community: Ameri...
Richard Jean So’s new book studies a group of American and Chinese writers in the three decades after WWI to propose a conceptual framework for understanding intellectual and cultural relations between China and America in the twentieth century and bey...
66 min
2562
David Willgren, “The Formation of the ‘Book’ of...
How was the ‘Book’ of Psalms formed, and why? The first question relates to the diachronic growth of the collection, while the second relates to issues of purpose–to what end are psalms being juxtaposed in a collection? On this show,
46 min
2563
Sara L. Crosby, “Poisonous Muse: The Female Poi...
In this episode of the H-Law Legal History Podcast I talk with Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University at Marion, Sara L. Crosby about her new book, Poisonous Muse: The Female Poisoner and the Framing of Popular Authorship in Jackso...
70 min
2564
Melissa Sweet, “Some Writer! The Story of E.B. ...
Readers of all ages know E. B. White’s work. Charlotte’s Web is the first book many children are read aloud. Elements of Style remains an essential reference book. Almost everyone has a favorite writing by White: his legendary essays; his humorous New ...
45 min
2565
David Shafer, “Antonin Artaud” (Reaktion/U Chic...
“Artaud lived with his neck placed firmly in the noose.” -Bauhaus* David Shafer’s new biography, Antonin Artaud (Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press, 2016), situates the life of this enigmatic and fascinating figure in historical context...
58 min
2566
Violeta Davoliute, “The Making and Breaking of ...
In The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War, published by Routledge, Violeta Davoliute calls Lithuania an improbably successful and paradoxically representative case study of 20th century modernization and na...
61 min
2567
Eva Mroczek, “The Literary Imagination in Jewis...
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed a world of early Jewish writing larger than the Bible, from multiple versions of biblical texts to revealed books not found in our canon. Despite this diversity,
49 min
2568
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
2569
Gail Ashton, ed. “Medieval Afterlives in Contem...
Dilapidated thirteenth-century walls as a playscape for today’s children, medieval relics made as fetish objects for twenty-first century enthusiasts, tourism at “the birthplace of King Arthur,” Harry Potter’s pageantry, Game of Thrones‘ swordplay,
32 min
2570
Scott Bruce, ed., “The Penguin Book of the Unde...
Like so many Americans, I’m a big fan of the undead. I look forward to a night of nail-biting when a new episode of The Walking Dead airs and I get excited when Hollywood gears up for the next big-budget film featuring zombie hordes.
36 min
2571
Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, “The Art of...
On today’s program, I talk with Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle about their new book, The Art of the Bible Illuminated Manuscripts from the Medieval World, published by Thames and Hudson (and distributed in the United States by W. W.
63 min
2572
Christian Lange, “Paradise and Hell in Islamic ...
Christian Lange’s Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which was recently awarded the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society’s Book Prize, presents a rich, challenging, and meticulous account of how Muslims have conce...
57 min
2573
Jonathan Brooks Platt, “Greetings, Pushkin! Sta...
Greetings, Pushkin! Stalinist Cultural Politics and the Russian National Bard (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) by Jonathan Brooks Platt explores the national celebrations around the centennial anniversary of Pushkin’s death in 1937.
61 min
2574
Matthew Pauly, “Breaking the Tongue: Language, ...
Matthew Pauly’s Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934 (University of Toronto Press, 2014) offers a detailed investigation of the language policy–officially termed Ukrainization–that was introduced in Ukraine d...
69 min
2575
Mary Chapman, “Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fict...
Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism and Travel Writing of Edith Maude Eaton (McGill-Queens University Press, 2016) is a collection of works–previously published and newly discovered–produced by Edith Eaton,
56 min