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.

Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com

Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/

Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork


Arts
2201
Brian Collins, "The Other Rāma: Matricide and G...
Collins examines a fascinating, understudied figure appearing in Sanskrit narrative texts: Paraśurāma, i.e., “Rāma with the Axe”...
60 min
2202
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: ...
How involved with slavery were American universities? And what does their involvement mean for us?
56 min
2203
Martha Ackermann, "These Fevered Days: Ten Pivo...
After a life lived in obscurity, Emily Dickinson emerged after death as one of the greatest poets of her time...
53 min
2204
Great Books: Melissa Schwartzberg on Rousseau's...
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."
57 min
2205
Archana Venkatesan, "Endless Song: Tiruvaymoli"...
In this interview we discuss the sophisticated structure and profound content of the Tiruvaymoli, along with the translator’s own transformative journey rending into English the meaning, emotion, cadence and kaleidoscopic brilliance proper to this Tamil masterpiece...
61 min
2206
Archana Venkatesan, "Endless Song: Tiruvaymoli"...
In this interview we discuss the sophisticated structure and profound content of the Tiruvaymoli, along with the translator’s own transformative journey rending into English the meaning, emotion, cadence and kaleidoscopic brilliance proper to this Tamil masterpiece...
61 min
2207
Robert Elmer, "Piercing Heaven: Prayers of the ...
Elmer's anthology provides access into a world of religious practice that is otherwise lost – many puritans refusing on principle to put their prayers to paper...
30 min
2208
Great Books: Maureen McLane on Wordsworth's Poetry
The British romantic poet William Wordsworth is best known for his moving evocations of nature,..
66 min
2209
Christiane Gruber, “The Praiseworthy One: The P...
Gruber demonstrates that there is long rich history of images of Muhammad from within the Islamic tradition...
60 min
2210
Joseph Rex Young, "George R.R. Martin and the F...
“In the game of thrones you either win or you die."
87 min
2211
Great Books: Nicholas Johnson on Samuel Beckett
“Another heavenly day” is the opening line of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days (1961),...
65 min
2212
Conor Picken and Matthew Dischinger, "Southern ...
Picken and Dischinger argue in the introduction that the relationship between the US South and alcohol has been overdetermined in popular imagination...
58 min
2213
Margaret Hillenbrand, "Negative Exposures: Know...
Focusing on the storied afterlives and artistic re-purposings of photographic images from key junctures of China’s twentieth-century – the Nanjing Massacre, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square protests – Hillenbrand shows how they expose the subtle contours of what it is permissible and what impermissible to know...
58 min
2214
C. Baker and P. Phongpaichit, "From the Fifty J...
The Jātaka tales, or stories of the Buddha’s previous lives as a bodhisatta, are included in the Pāli Canon and have for centuries been a rich source of inspiration in Theravada Buddhism...
82 min
2215
Great Books: Amir Eshel on Paul Celan's Poetry
Paul Celan's poetry marks the end of European modernism..
55 min
2216
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Parad...
According to Cook, a paradox paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick...
51 min
2217
Great Books: Julie Carlson on Mary Shelley's "F...
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus when she was nineteen years old on a bet...
50 min
2218
Elizabeth A. Wheeler, "HandiLand: The Crippest ...
Wheeler uses a fictional place called HandiLand as a yardstick for measuring how far American society has progressed toward social justice and how much remains to be done...
56 min
2219
Elizabeth A. Wheeler, "HandiLand: The Crippest ...
Wheeler uses a fictional place called HandiLand as a yardstick for measuring how far American society has progressed toward social justice and how much remains to be done...
56 min
2220
Jessie Labov, "Transatlantic Central Europe: Co...
While there are still occasional uses of it today, the term "Central Europe" carries little of the charge that it did in the 1980s and early 1990s...
51 min
2221
Nicholas R. Jones, "Staging Habla de Negros: Ra...
Jones problematizes long-held beliefs among literary critics and linguists that habla de negros as represented in dominant Spanish literature was exclusively racist stereotypes...
75 min
2222
Andrew Ollett, "Language of the Snakes" (U Cali...
Ollett argues that Prakit is “the most important Indian language you’ve never heard of.”
63 min
2223
Cosmopolitan Printing in a Hybrid Language: A D...
An interview with Tom Hoogervorst
26 min
2224
Great Books: John Callahan on Ellison's "Invisi...
Ellison tells the story of an African-American man who insists on his visibility, agency, and humanity in a country dead-set on not seeing him...
50 min
2225
Carl W. Ernst, “Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr”...
“I am the Real,” is the ecstatic statement often associated with the early Sufi poet Mansur al-Hallaj...
57 min