New Books in Literary Studies

Interviews with Scholars of Literature about their New Books

Arts
2176
Victoria Lamont, “Westerns: A Women’s History” ...
Westerns are having a bit of a moment in the early twenty-first century. Westworld was recently nominated for eight Emmys, the hit show Deadwood is slated for a return to television in the next few years, and in 2015 Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eig...
50 min
2177
Jeffrey Kahan, “Shakespeare and Superheroes” (A...
What do Shakespeare and superheroes have in common? A penchant for lycra and capes? A flair for the dramatic? Well, according to Shakespeare scholar, English Professor and comic-book fan Jeffrey Kahan, the connection between Batman and the Bard runs mu...
63 min
2178
Stephanie L. Derrick, “The Fame of C. S. Lewis:...
C. S. Lewis remains one of the most popular religious writers, and one of the most widely discussed children’s writers. I had the chance to catch up with Stephanie L. Derrick about her new book, The Fame of C. S.
34 min
2179
Sara J. Brenneis, “Spaniards in Mauthausen: Rep...
To be quite honest, I had no idea there were any Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen. That’s perhaps an unusual way to begin a blog post.  But it reflects a real gap in the literature about the Holocaust, one that Sara J.
59 min
2180
Jacqueline Rose ,”Mothers: An Essay on Love and...
I left the kitchen radio on while reading Jacqueline Rose‘s Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) in preparation for this interview. It was June. Putting the book down for a minute to get a glass of water,
52 min
2181
Laila Amine, “Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of I...
At the heart of Laila Amine’s book is a crucial question: where is Paris? This question may be surprising for anyone who can readily point to the French capital on a map. Geography is, after all stable, is it not?
35 min
2182
Nick Hubble, “The Proletarian Answer to the Mod...
Nick Hubble’s The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) is a thrilling, and timely challenge to the orthodoxy that proletarian and high-modernist literatures ought to be understood in opposition to one another....
85 min
2183
Scott Spector, “Modernism Without Jews?: German...
Was there anything particularly Modern about Modern Jews? Was there something characteristically Jewish about Modernism? In this episode, we hear from Scott Spector, professor of History and German Studies at the University of Michigan,
69 min
2184
M. Cooper Harriss, “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible T...
Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man is a milestone of American literature and the idea of invisibility has become a key way for understanding social marginalization. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Theology (NYU Press, 2017), M. Cooper Harriss,
57 min
2185
Rebecca Reich, “State of Madness: Psychiatry, L...
In her new book, State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature and Dissent After Stalin (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Rebecca Reich argues that Soviet dissident writers used literary narratives to counter state-sanctioned psychiatric diagnoses...
52 min
2186
Megan Ward, “Seeming Human: Artificial Intellig...
Artificial intelligence and Victorian literature: these two notions seem incompatible. AI brings us to the age of information and technology, whereas Victorian literature invites us to the world of lengthy novels, to the world of the written word.
33 min
2187
Marc Leeds, “The Vonnegut Encyclopedia” (Delaco...
Originally published in 1994, Marc Leeds’ The Vonnegut Encyclopedia (Delacorte Press, 2016) was initially conceived of as a comprehensive A-Z guide to the expansive oeuvre of the American author Kurt Vonnegut.
98 min
2188
Julia Miele Rodas, “Autistic Disturbances: Theo...
Ever since the first clinical account of autism was published by Dr. Leo Kanner in 1943, Western culture has tended to mythologise the disorder as impenetrable, non-verbal and characterised by silence. As such,
105 min
2189
Olga Borovaya, “The Beginnings of Ladino Litera...
When did Ladino literature emerge? According to Dr. Olga Borovaya, author of The Beginnings of Ladino Literature: Moses Almosnino and his Readers (Indiana University Press, 2017), the history of Ladino writing may have a much earlier start date than sc...
68 min
2190
Lily Wong, “Transpacific Attachments: Sex Work,...
Lily Wong‘s Transpacific Attachments: Sex Work, Media Networks, and Affective Histories of Chineseness (Columbia University Press, 2018) traces the genealogy of the Chinese sex worker as a figure who manifests throughout the 20th century in moments of ...
48 min
2191
Zhang Tianyi (tr. David Hull), “The Pidgin Warr...
“Big boys, the story in this little book is told for you.” Thus begins the preface to Zhang Tianyi’s The Pidgin Warrior (Balestier Press, 2017), as translated by the wonderful David Hull. Not just for boys (big or small),
61 min
2192
Sumana Roy, “How I Became a Tree” (Aleph, 2017)
Sumana Roy‘s first book How I Became a Tree (Aleph, 2017) is impossible to classify. Part-philosophical tract, part-memoir and part-literary criticism, the book is a record of her explorations in “tree-time.” Intrigued by the balance,
58 min
2193
Steven Gimbel, “Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophi...
Humor and its varied manifestations—jesting joking around, goofing, lampooning, and so on—pervade the human experience and are plausibly regarded as necessary features of interpersonal interactions.  As one would expect,
64 min
2194
Irina Dumitrescu, “The Experience of Education ...
A sharply observed study of the representations of education found in Anglo-Saxon texts, Irina Dumitrescu’s The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge University Press 2018) invites readers to recognize just how often educational ...
50 min
2195
Sucharita Adluri, “Textual Authority in Classic...
What role, if any, do mythological texts play in philosophical discourse?  While modern Hindu Studies scholars are becoming increasingly attuned to the extent to which Indian narratives encode ideology, Sucharita Adluri’s Textual Authority in Classical...
36 min
2196
Reginald Jackson, “Textures of Mourning: Callig...
Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deeply in shaping how we understand the past, live in the present, and imagine possible futures.
77 min
2197
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
2198
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
2199
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
2200
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