Help Support H-Net! | Visit New Books Network en Español!

New Books Network
Intellectual History
High Theory April 1, 2022

Welcome to High Theory!

Kim Adams and Soronik Bosu

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
Welcome to High Theory! High Theory is a podcast in which we get high on the substance of theory. And we ask the three standard questions, to each other, and …

Intellectual History

Subscribe:

Interviews with intellectual historians about their new books.

African American Studies December 8, 2022

The Matter of Black Living

The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930

Autumn Womack

Hosted by Laura Stark
Autumn Womack is a professor of English and of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her new book, The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–193 …
East Asian Studies December 7, 2022

The Curious Case of the Camel in Modern Japan

(De)Colonialism, Orientalism, and Imagining Asia

Ayelet Zohar

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
Ayelet Zohar’s The Curious Case of the Camel in Modern Japan: (De)Colonialism, Orientalism, and Imagining Asia (Brill, 2022) traces the use of camels in the visual vocabulary of Japan’s definition …
Jewish Studies December 6, 2022

The Heresy of Jacob Frank

From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth

Jay Michaelson

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
In The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth (Oxford University Press, 2022), Jay Michaelson explores the religious philosophy of the mercurial eighteenth-century figure Jacob Frank, who …
The Vault December 6, 2022

Second Thoughts on Consistency

A Lecture by Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hosted by New York Institute for the Humanities
In October 1981, Hans Magnus Enzensberger gave the Institute’s James lecture, titled “Second  Thoughts on Consistency.” Enzensberger, who died in November, 2022, at the age of 93, was a German translator …
Genocide Studies December 5, 2022

Primo Levi and Ka-Tzetnik

The Map and the Territory

Yochai Ataria

Hosted by Yakir Englander
Primo Levi and Ka-Tzetnik: The Map and the Territory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) is about Primo Levi and Ka-Tzetnik, both Auschwitz survivors and central figures in the shaping of Holocaust memory …
Politics & Polemics December 5, 2022

Conservatism

A Rediscovery

Yoram Hazony

Hosted by Hope J. Leman
Conservatism needs to be rediscovered. That is, it needs to be differentiated from the post WWII concept of liberal democracy and return to its traditional three pillars of religion, nationalism …
Women's History December 5, 2022

Anti-Fascism, Gender, and International Communism

The Comité Mondial Des Femmes Contre la Guerre Et Le Fascisme, 1934-1941

Jasmine Calver

Hosted by Rebecca Turkington
Women played an essential role in the international struggle against fascism during the interwar period, though their work has been neglected in broader historiography. In Anti-Fascism, Gender, and International Communism …
Early Modern History December 5, 2022

The Art of Childbirth

A Seventeenth-Century Midwife's Epistolary Treatise to Doctor Vallant

Cathy McClive

Hosted by Jana Byars
Cathy McClive (Florida State University) offers the first full-length bilingual edition of an extraordinary treatise on childbirth written by a seventeenth-century French midwife in The Art of Childbirth: A Seventeenth-Century Midwife's Epistolary …
Islamic Studies December 4, 2022

Hamas and Ideology

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qara?awi on the Jews, Zionism and Israel

Shaul Bartal and Nesya Rubinstein-Shemer

Hosted by Yakir Englander
Sheikh Yusūf al- Qaraḍāwī is regarded as the most influential contemporary Muslim religious figure. His best-selling book, Al-Ḥalal wal-Ḥaram fi al-Islam ("The Forbidden and the Permitted in Islam") is …
Middle Eastern Studies December 3, 2022

Agents of the Hidden Imam

Forging Twelver Shi‘ism, 850-950 CE

Edmund Hayes

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
In 874 CE, the eleventh Imam died, and the Imami community splintered. The institutions of the Imamate were maintained by the dead Imam's agents, who asserted they were in contact …
Scholarly Communication December 3, 2022

Absent Presences in the Colonial Archive

Dealing with the Berlin Sound Archive's Acoustic Legacies

Irene Hilden

Hosted by Jen Hoyer
Dealing with the colonial archive entails acknowledging the inability to know everything, accounting for the archive’s limited and incomplete condition. Dealing with the colonial archive is not merely about stories …
Art December 3, 2022

Foreshadowed

Malevich’s "Black Square" and Its Precursors

Andrew Spira

Hosted by Allison Leigh
When Kasimir’s Malevich’s Black Square was produced in 1915, no one had ever seen anything like it before. And yet it does have precedents. In fact, over the previous five …
Iberian Studies December 3, 2022

Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-De-Siècle Spain

Jennifer Smith

Hosted by Carmen Gomez-Galisteo
Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-De-Siècle Spain (Vanderbilt UP, 2021) argues that the reinterpretation of female mysticism as hysteria and nymphomania in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Spain was …
High Theory December 2, 2022

Civil Disobedience

A Discussion with Eraldo Souza dos Santos

Eraldo Souza dos Santos

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
Eraldo Souza dos Santos talks about the invention of civil disobedience as a form of political action around the world, and the need for its redefinition to describe activism present …
Military History December 1, 2022

The Wandering Army

The Campaigns That Transformed the British Way of War

Huw J. Davies

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
In The Wandering Army: The Campaigns that Transformed the British Way of War (Yale University Press, 2022), Dr. Huw J. Davies presents a compelling history of the British Army in …
Indian Religions December 1, 2022

Human Being, Bodily Being

Phenomenology from Classical India

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
In Human Being, Bodily Being: Phenomenology from Classical India (Oxford UP, 2021), Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad offers illuminating new perspectives on contemporary phenomenological theories of body and subjectivity, based on studies of diverse classical …
Philosophy December 1, 2022

Legitimate Opposition

Alexander Kirshner

Hosted by Robert Talisse
The idea of legitimate political opposition is familiar. A decent political order permits citizens, parties, and coalitions to challenge those in power. Under such conditions, there is an ongoing nonviolent …
Writ Large December 1, 2022

On John Rawl's "A Theory of Justice"

A Discussion with Michele Moody-Adams

Michele Moody-Adams

Hosted by Zachary Davis
How do you create a fair society? Who deserves to rule? What rights do citizens have? How are those rights protected? What does it mean to act morally within society …
Darts & Letters November 30, 2022

Mathematical Morality

The Ideology that Justifies Billionaires

Émile P. Torres

Hosted by Gordon Katic
How can billionaires justify the endless accumulation of wealth? Effective altruism. An almost religious philosophical belief. Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO and founder of collapsed crypto exchange FTX is a …