New Books Network
Intellectual History
Art January 18, 2022

Partisan Aesthetics

Modern Art and India's Long Decolonization

Sanjukta Sunderason

Hosted by Holiday Powers
In Partisan Aesthetics: Modern Art and India's Long Decolonization (Stanford UP, 2020), Sanjukta Sunderason explores art's entanglements with histories of war, famine, mass politics and displacements that marked late-colonial and …

Intellectual History

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Interviews with intellectual historians about their new books.

Art January 13, 2022

A Philosophy of the Art School

Michael Newall

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
If one were to devise a motto for the art school of today, the choice between 'you too are an artist' and 'abandon all hope you who enter here' would …
Jewish Studies January 13, 2022

Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin

A Fugitive Modernism

Marc Caplan

Hosted by Lea Greenberg
In Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism (Indiana UP, 2021), Marc Caplan explores the reciprocal encounter between Eastern European Jews and German culture in the days following World War …
Literary Studies January 13, 2022

Places of Mind

A Life of Edward Said

Timothy Brennan

Hosted by Bryant Scott
Timothy Brennan is Professor of Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, and English at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of several seminal books in literary studies, including Borrowed Light …
Indian Religions January 11, 2022

Hindu Theology and Biology

The Bhagavata Purana and Contemporary Theory

Jonathan B. Edelmann

Hosted by Shruti Dixit
In Hindu Theology and Biology: The Bhagavata Purana and Contemporary Theory (Oxford University Press, 2020), Professor Jonathan B. Edelmann develops a constructive and comparative theological dialogue between Hinduism and Western …
History of Science January 11, 2022

Flashes of Creation

George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate

Paul Halpern

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Today, the Big Bang is so entrenched in our understanding of the cosmos that to doubt it would seem crazy. But as Paul Halpern shows in Flashes of Creation: George …
Recall This Book January 6, 2022

Jennifer Egan with Ivan Kreilkamp

Fiction as Streaming, Genre as Portal (Novel Dialogue crossover, JP)

Jennifer Egan and Ivan Kreilkamp

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
This week on Recall this Book, another delightful crossover episode from our sister podcast Novel Dialogue, which puts scholars and writers together to discuss the making of novels and what …
Political Science January 6, 2022

Uncivil Mirth

Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain

Ross Carroll

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Political Theorist Ross Carroll takes the reader through Enlightenment conversations about the use of ridicule and laughter in politics and political engagement in his new book, Uncivil Mirth: Ridicule in …
Literary Studies January 4, 2022

Strategic Occidentalism

On Mexican Fiction, the Neoliberal Book Market, and the Question of World Literature

Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado

Hosted by Bryant Scott
Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado is Professor of Spanish, Latin American Studies, and Film and Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. His areas of research include Latin American intellectual …
General History January 4, 2022

The Transcendentalists and Their World

Robert A. Gross

Hosted by Ryan Tripp
In The Transcendentalists and Their World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), Robert A. Gross offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsize impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord …
Latin American Studies January 4, 2022

Philosophy and Criticism in Latin America

From Mariátegui to Sloterdijk

Mabel Moraña

Hosted by Daniela Gutierrez Flores
Mabel Moraña's book Philosophy and Criticism in Latin America: From Mariátegui to Sloterdijk (Cambria Press, 2020) explores the complex relationships between the fields of philosophy and criticism, focusing on methodological, ideological …
Southeast Asian Studies January 3, 2022

Power and Knowledge in Southeast Asia

State and Scholars in Indonesia and the Philippines

Rommel Argamosa Curaming

Hosted by Duncan McCargo
Why did leading historians in both Indonesia and the Philippines become involved in projects to write national histories during the 1970s? How far were these projects essentially political undertakings to …
Jewish Studies December 31, 2021

Sanctified Sex

The Two-Thousand-Year Jewish Debate on Marital Intimacy

Noam Sachs Zion

Hosted by Rachel Adelman
Sanctified Sex: The Two-Thousand-Year Jewish Debate on Marital Intimacy (Jewish Publication Society, 2021) draws on two thousand years of rabbinic debates addressing competing aspirations for loving intimacy, passionate sexual union …
Russian and Eurasian Studies December 30, 2021

Putin's Attempt to Hide the Crimes of Stalinism

A Talk with Benjamin Nathans about the Suppression of "Memorial"

Benjamin Nathans

Hosted by Marshall Poe
For the past 30 years, a group of Russian scholars have dedicated themselves to uncovering the crimes of Stalinism. Their organization, Memorial, has in that time made great strides in …
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel December 29, 2021

American Schism

How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

Seth David Radwell

Hosted by Renee Garfinkel
Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America …
African Studies December 29, 2021

Making the World Global

U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary

Isaac A. Kamola

Hosted by Sara Katz
Following World War II the American government and philanthropic foundations fundamentally remade American universities into sites for producing knowledge about the world as a collection of distinct nation-states. As neoliberal …
General History December 27, 2021

The Cause

The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783

Joseph J. Ellis

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the …
Science December 22, 2021

Joseph Reagle on H. G. Wells's "World Brain" (1937)

Joseph Reagle

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
In a series of talks and essays in 1937, H. G. Wells proselytized for what he called a World Brain, as manifested in a World Encyclopedia--a repository of scientifically established …
Japanese Studies December 22, 2021

A Fictional Commons

Natsume Soseki and the Properties of Modern Literature

Michael K. Bourdaghs

Hosted by Jingyi Li
Modernity arrived in Japan, as elsewhere, through new forms of ownership. In A Fictional Commons: Natsume Soseki and the Properties of Modern Literature (Duke UP, 2021), Michael K. Bourdaghs explores …
Literary Studies December 20, 2021

Infrastructures of Apocalypse

American Literature and the Nuclear Complex

Jessica Hurley

Hosted by Christian Long
Since 1945, America has spent more resources on nuclear technology than any other national project. Although it requires a massive infrastructure that touches society on myriad levels, nuclear technology has …