New Books in Literary Studies

Interviews with Scholars of Literature about their New Books

Arts
2151
Jay Geller, “Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural His...
In Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews (Fordham University Press, 2017), Jay Geller, Associate Professor of Modern Jewish Culture at Vanderbilt Divinity School and the Vanderbilt University Jewish Studies Program,
39 min
2152
Kirstin Squint, “LeAnne Howe at the Intersectio...
Choctaw writer LeAnne Howe has quickly emerged as a crucial voice in twenty-first-century American literature. Her innovative, award-winning works of fiction, poetry, drama, and criticism capture the complexities of Native American life and interrogate...
66 min
2153
Elizabeth M. Sanders, “Genres of Doubt: Science...
The Victorians left an indelible stamp on culture that continues to be in evidence today, not least of which is their refinement of the realist fiction medium known as the novel and their innovations, which led to the birth of fantasy and science ficti...
76 min
2154
Ari Heinrich, “Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Ae...
Ari Larissa Heinrich’s new book, Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body (Duke University Press, 2018), is a fascinating study of representations of the Chinese body in the context of biotechnology.
45 min
2155
Rebekah J. Buchanan, “Writing a Riot: Riot Grrr...
In 1989, Time magazine pronounced “Feminism is dead.” It seemed to mainstream culture that the conservative era, marked by Regan and Thatcher, had killed the lingering energy that began with the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1960s. And yet,
47 min
2156
Christopher G. White, “Other Worlds: Spirituali...
In the modern world, we often tend to view the scientific and the spiritual as diametrically opposed adversaries; we see them as fundamentally irreconcilable ways of understanding the world, whose epistemologies are so divergent that they espouse radic...
1 min
2157
Elias Muhanna, “The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri...
Described as a small book about a very large book, The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2017) by Elias Muhanna tells the story of an encyclopedia, or a universal compendium,
51 min
2158
Andrii Danylenko, “From the Bible to Shakespear...
How does a language develop? What are the factors and processes that shape a language and reflect the changes it undergoes? These seemingly routine questions entail a conversation that involves not only linguistic phenomena, but historical,
49 min
2159
Robert D. Miller II, “The Dragon, the Mountain,...
People have long been captivated by stories of dragons. Myths related to dragon slaying can be found across many civilizations around the world, even among the most ancient cultures including ancient Israel. In his book The Dragon, the Mountain,
27 min
2160
Helen Bones, “The Expatriate Myth: New Zealand ...
In her new book, The Expatriate Myth: New Zealand Writers and the Colonial World (Otago University Press, 2018), Helen Bones, a Research Associate in Digital Humanities at Western Sydney University, presents a new look at late nineteenth and early twen...
15 min
2161
Samuel England, “Medieval Empires and the Cultu...
In his thrilling and sparkling new book, Medieval Empires and the Cultures of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Samuel England, Assistant Professor of Arabic at the University of Wisconsin-M...
35 min
2162
Sami Schalk, “Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)abilit...
What do werewolves, enslaved women and immortal beings have in common? And how can they shed light on contemporary questions of ableism and police brutality? In Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction (...
33 min
2163
Bruno Chaouat, “Is Theory Good for the Jews?: F...
“Is Theory Good for the Jews?” asks author Bruno Chaouat, professor of French at the University of Minnesota, in Is Theory Good for the Jews?: French Thought and the Challenge of the New Antisemitism (Liverpool University Press, 2017) .
70 min
2164
Daniel Heath Justice, “Why Indigenous Literatur...
In a remarkable new book, Daniel Heath Justice, an author and professor of First Nations and Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia, makes an argument for the vitality of Indigenous literatures and their ability to help ma...
45 min
2165
Wojtek Sawa, “The Wall Speaks: Voices of the Un...
Wojtek Sawa‘s The Wall Speaks: Voices of the Unheard (National Center of Culture, 2016) is a bilingual Polish-English project that engages with the intricacies of remembering and forgetting as part of the individual’s personal history,
44 min
2166
Luisa Banki, “Post-Katastrophische Poetik: Zu W...
W. G. Sebald, one of the most prominent German-speaking authors of the late 20th century, has been discussed in German literary studies again and again. Nonetheless, many questions about him and his work remain open.
21 min
2167
Mark I. Lurie, “Galantière: The Lost Generation...
Though he never enjoyed the publishing success and fame of such friends as Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, Lewis Galantière made a considerable contribution to literature over the course of the twentieth century.
65 min
2168
Stephan Resch, “Stefan Zweig und der Europa-Ged...
In Stefan Zweig und der Europa-Gedanke (Königshausen & Neumann, 2017), Stephan Resch analyzes the Austrian author’s relationship with Europe and the concept of pacifism. To date Stephan Zweig is a contentious figure,
38 min
2169
Discussion with Dahlia Schweitzer (“Going Viral...
Follow-up interviews are always fun. Listen to my follow-up interview with Dahlia Schweitzer, author of Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World (Rutgers University Press, 2018). I talk with her and Rob Thomas,
4 min
2170
Mark Rifkin, “Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sov...
Mark Rifkin’s Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination (Duke University Press, 2017) engages fields including physics, phenomenology, native storytelling, and queer temporality.
50 min
2171
Barry Wimpfheimer, “The Talmud: A Biography” (P...
​In The Talmud: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2018), Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, associate professor of religious studies and law at Northwestern University, introduces the reader to the Babylonian Talmud,
52 min
2172
Erin Edwards, “The Modernist Corpse: Posthumani...
At the beginning of the 20th century, surrealists such as André Breton and Man Ray played a game called “Exquisite Corpse.” You can play it by drawing or by writing, and the rules are very simple. Let’s say you’re writing.
45 min
2173
Sarah Schulman, “Conflict is Not Abuse: Oversta...
Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016) examines how accusations of harm are appropriated and deployed by powerful people, groups,
60 min
2174
Mark A. McCutcheon, “The Medium Is the Monster:...
What do Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Canadian popular culture have in common? This is the question that Mark A. McCutcheon seeks to answer in his new book, The Medium Is the Monster: Canadian Adaptations of Frankenst...
77 min
2175
Mira Beth Wasserman, “Jews, Gentiles, and Other...
In Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals: The Talmud After the Humanities (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), Mira Beth Wasserman undertakes a close reading of Avoda Zara, arguably the Talmud’s most scandalous tractate,
43 min