New Books Network
Intellectual History
Critical Theory October 25, 2021

Lukács

Praxis and the Absolute

Daniel Andrés López

Hosted by Stephen Dozeman
The Hungarian Marxist philosopher George Lukács has long occupied a complicated place in the Marxist canon of thinkers, both his lived and theoretical practice subject to much critical commentary …

Intellectual History

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Interviews with intellectual historians about their new books.

Jewish Studies October 25, 2021

Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Turn

Philosophy and Jewish Thought

Ethan Kleinberg

Hosted by Britton Edelen
In this episode, I interview Ethan Kleinberg, professor of history and letters at Wesleyan University, about his new book, Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought, recently published by …
Gender Studies October 22, 2021

Portraits of Wollstonecraft

Eileen Hunt Botting

Hosted by Lilian Calles Barger
Eileen Hunt Botting is a Professor political science at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Botting is a widely published and cited scholar on the thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, the …
Islamic Studies October 22, 2021

The Beauty of the Houri

Heavenly Virgins and Feminine Ideals

Nerina Rustomji

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her scintillating new book, The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins, Feminine Ideals (Oxford UP, 2021), Nerina Rustomji presents a fascinating and multilayered intellectual and cultural history of the category …
Intellectual History October 21, 2021

On Borders

Territories, Legitimacy, and the Rights of Place

Paulina Ochoa Espejo

Hosted by Tejas Parasher
When are borders justified? Who has a right to control them? Where should they be drawn? Today people think of borders as an island's shores. Just as beaches delimit a …
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel October 21, 2021

Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone)

Sam Wineburg

Hosted by Renee Garfinkel
We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percentage of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-meaning but ignorant. Some of …
Politics & Polemics October 20, 2021

America Transformed

The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism

Ronald J. Pestritto

Hosted by Hope J. Leman
What’s a “progressive?” We hear constantly about the rift in the Democratic Party between its “progressive” wing and its “moderate” one. But what exactly was “Progressivism?” And why do we …
Russian and Eurasian Studies October 20, 2021

All Future Plunges to the Past

James Joyce in Russian Literature

José Vergara

Hosted by Steven Seegel
All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature (Cornell UP, 2021) explores how Russian writers from the mid-1920s on have read and responded to Joyce's work …
Philosophy October 20, 2021

The Politics of Black Joy

Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism

Lindsey Stewart

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
What can southern Black joy teach us about agency? What role does refusal have in liberation? What more might there be to root work than resistance? In The Politics of …
Politics & Polemics October 18, 2021

Skirmishes

With Friends, Enemies, and Neutrals

Graham Harman

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
One of the fifty most influential living philosophers, a “self-promoting charlatan” (Brian Leiter), and the orchestrator of an “online orgy of stupidity” (Ray Brassier). In Skirmishes: With Friends, Enemies, and …
Geography October 15, 2021

Extraction Ecologies and the Literature of the Long Exhaustion

Elizabeth Carolyn Miller

Hosted by Stentor Danielson
The 1830s to the 1930s saw the rise of large-scale industrial mining in the British imperial world. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller examines how literature of this era reckoned with a new …
Ideas Roadshow Podcast October 15, 2021

Kant, Applied

Onora O’Neill

Hosted by Howard Burton
Kant, Applied is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Onora O’Neill, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a crossbench member of the …
Ideas Roadshow Podcast October 14, 2021

Democratic Lessons

What the Greeks Can Teach Us

Josiah Ober

Hosted by Howard Burton
Democratic Lessons: What the Greeks Can Teach Us is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Josiah Ober, Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Professor in Honor of Constantine Mitsotakis Professor of …
European Studies October 13, 2021

New Lefts

The Making of a Radical Tradition

Terence Renaud

Hosted by Mathias Fuelling
In the 1960s, the radical youth of Western Europe’s New Left rebelled against the democratic welfare state and their parents’ antiquated politics of reform. It was not the first time …
Politics & Polemics October 12, 2021

The Rights of Women

Reclaiming a Lost Vision

Erika Bachiochi

Hosted by Hope J. Leman
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was one of the most important moral philosophers and political theorists ever. Her writings on liberty and equality have been embraced by thinkers both in her own …
South Asian Studies October 12, 2021

Theosophy across Boundaries

Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement

Hans Martin Krämer and Julian Strube

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement (SUNY Press, 2020) brings a global history approach to the study of esotericism, highlighting the important role of …
Intellectual History October 12, 2021

Marxism and America

New Appraisals

Christopher Phelps and Robin Vandome

Hosted by Catriona Gold
If the United States has been so hostile to Marxism, what accounts for Marxism's recurrent attractiveness to certain Americans? Marxism and America: New Appraisals (Manchester University Press, 2021) sheds new light …
Intellectual History October 11, 2021

The State of Nature

Histories of an Idea

Mark Somos and Anne Peters

Hosted by Alexandra Ortolja-Baird
The phrase, “state of nature”, has been used over centuries to describe the uncultivated state of lands and animals, nudity, innocence, heaven and hell, interstate relations, and the locus of …
Italian Studies October 11, 2021

Court and Its Critics

Anti-Court Sentiments in Early Modern Italy

Paola Ugolini

Hosted by Gerry Milligan
The fashionable and decorous men whom we recognize in portraits and letters from the Italian Renaissance penned some of the most scathing critiques of the courts in which they served …
History of Science October 8, 2021

Race Unmasked

Biology and Race in the Twentieth Century

Michael Yudell

Hosted by Hussein Mohsen
Race, while drawn from the visual cues of human diversity, is an idea with a measurable past, an identifiable present, and an uncertain future. The concept of race has been …