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Literary Studies
CEU Press Podcast Series September 22, 2023

The Poet & the Baroness

W.H. Auden and Stella Musulin, a Friendship

Michael O’Sullivan

Hosted by CEU Press
Listen:
In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast Series, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with biographer and historian Michael O’Sullivan to discuss his latest book …

Literary Studies

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Interviews with scholars of literature about their new books.

Novel Dialogue September 21, 2023

Weirding Out with Kate Marshall

Novel Dialogue Season 6 Preview

Kate Marshall

Hosted by Novel Dialogue
Listen:
We kick off Season 6 with Kate Marshall, friend of the show and author of the forthcoming book Novels by Aliens: Weird Tales and the Twenty-First Century. Hosts and producers …
Literary Studies September 21, 2023

Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again

The Original Novellas by Shigeru Kayama

Shigeru Kayama

Hosted by Daniel Moran
Listen:
Godzilla emerged from the sea to devastate Tokyo in the now-classic 1954 film, produced by Tōhō Studios and directed by Ishirō Honda, creating a global sensation and launching one of …
Literary Studies September 19, 2023

Engaging Violence

Civility and the Reach of Literature

David Simpson

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Recent thinking has resuscitated civility as an important paradigm for engaging with a violence that must be deemed endemic to our lives. But, while it is widely acknowledged that civility …
Literary Studies September 18, 2023

The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation

Lenora Hanson

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
Lenora Hanson's The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation (Stanford UP, 2022) provides an account of the long arc of dispossession from the British Romantic period to today. Lenora Hanson glimpses histories …
Shakespeare For All September 18, 2023

Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" Part 3: The Language

A Discussion with Emma Smith

Emma Smith

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
In Part 3, Professor Emma Smith offers close-readings of some of the play’s most important scenes, which dramatize the wide range of relationships and types of love explored in the …
Literary Studies September 16, 2023

Emergency

Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis

Edgar Garcia

Hosted by John Yargo
Today’s guest is Edgar Garcia. Garcia’s new book Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Emergency takes nine words—“birds,” “wealth,” “caves,” “television,” …
Russian and Eurasian Studies September 16, 2023

Word Play

Experimental Poetry and Soviet Children's Literature

Ainsley Morse

Hosted by Polina Popova
Ainsley Morse's book Word Play: Experimental Poetry and Soviet Children's Literature (Northwestern UP, 2021) traces the history of the relationship between experimental aesthetics and Soviet children’s books, a relationship that persisted over …
Jewish Studies September 15, 2023

Under a Bloodred Sky

Avigdor Hameiri’s War Stories and Poetry

Avigdor Hameiri

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Listen:
Under a Bloodred Sky: Avigdor Hameiri’s War Stories and Poetry (Academic Studies Press, 2023) represents an anthology of Avigdor Hameiri’s ten most compelling war stories and poetry. His war stories …
Islamic Studies September 15, 2023

Bosnian Hajj Literature

Multiple Paths to the Holy

Dženita Karić

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
Listen:
Dženita Karić's new book Bosnian Hajj Literature: Multiple Paths to the Holy (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) maps the diverse understandings of the hajj in relation to Islamic geography by Bosnian …
Literary Studies September 15, 2023

Pamuk's Istanbul

The Self and the City

Pallavi Narayan

Hosted by Sanjay Kumar
Listen:
Pallavi Narayan's book Pamuk's Istanbul: The Self and the City (Routledge, 2022) reconstructs Istanbul through the prism of Orhan Pamuk’s fiction. It navigates the multiple selves and layers of Istanbul to present …
Literary Studies September 14, 2023

Plutarch's Prism

Rebecca Kingston

Hosted by Benjamin Phillips
Throughout the early modern period, political theorists in France and England drew on the works of Plutarch to offer advice to kings and princes. Elizabeth I herself translated Plutarch in …
Literary Studies September 12, 2023

Spiritual and Material Boundaries in Old French Verse

Contemplating the Walls of the Earthly Paradise

Jacob Abell

Hosted by Becky Straple-Sovers
Listen:
The Earthly Paradise was a vibrant symbol at the heart of medieval Christian geographies of the cosmos. As humanity’s primal home now lost through the sins of Adam of Eve …
Madison's Notes September 12, 2023

Religion and Politics in the Lord of the Rings

A Discussion with Rachel Fulton Brown

Rachel Fulton Brown

Hosted by Annika Nordquist
Listen:
J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork The Lord of the Rings delighted so many of us as children, yet it and its vast body of accompanying work, such as the Silmarillion, contain a …
Literary Studies September 12, 2023

But Have You Read the Book?

52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films

Kristen Lopez

Hosted by John Yargo
Listen:
Published earlier this year from Running Press, Kristen Lopez’s But Have You Read the Book?: 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films looks at almost a hundred years of …
Shakespeare For All September 11, 2023

Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" Part 2: Characters and Questions

A Discussion with Emma Smith

Emma Smith

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
Part 2 looks at the many instances of inversion and transgression, looking at how characters cross boundaries of gender, status, and social role, and how they are punished or rewarded …
Popular Culture September 11, 2023

The Disney Princess Phenomenon

A Feminist Analysis

Robyn Muir

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Listen:
The Disney Princesses are a billion-dollar industry, known and loved by children across the globe. In The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis (Bristol University Press, 2023) Dr. Robyn Muir …
Early Modern History September 10, 2023

Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Performance and Pedagogy

Deanne Williams

Hosted by Elspeth Currie
Deanne Williams's newest book, Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Performance and Pedagogy (Bloombury, 2023), is a groundbreaking study of the girl actor in the medieval and early …
Literary Studies September 10, 2023

The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures

Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry

Muḥsin Jāsim Mūsawī

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
The stories in the Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights, are familiar to many of us: from the tales of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and his …
Ancient History September 10, 2023

Vergil

The Poet's Life

Sarah Ruden

Hosted by Benjamin Phillips
The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of the best and worst of human nature. In the process of creating this epic …