New Books Network
Language
Language April 21, 2021

Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language and Only Humans Can

Herbert S. Terrace

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
Through discussion of his famous 1970s experiment alongside new research, in Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language and Only Humans Can (Columbia University Press, 2019), Herbert Terrace argues that, despite the …

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In Conversation: An OUP Podcast April 15, 2021

The Hidden History of Coined Words

Ralph Keyes

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Successful word-coinages--those that stay in currency for a good long time--tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted …
Communications April 14, 2021

Political Perversion

Rhetorical Aberration in the Time of Trumpeteering

Joshua Gunn

Hosted by Lee Pierce
When Trump became president, much of the country was repelled by what they saw as the vulgar spectacle of his ascent, a perversion of the highest office in the land …
Italian Studies April 7, 2021

Old Schools

Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress

Ramsey McGlazer

Hosted by Ellen Nerenberg
Ramsey McGlazer's Old Schools: Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress (Fordham University Press, 2020), traces the ways in which a group of modernist cultural practitioners (thinkers, politicians, artists, poets, novelists …
Japanese Studies April 1, 2021

The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900)

A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan

Christopher Joby

Hosted by Jingyi Li
In The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan (Brill, 2020), Christopher Joby offers the first book-length account of …
Scholarly Communication March 31, 2021

On Writtenness

The Cultural Politics of Academic Writing

Joan Turner

Hosted by Daniel Shea
Listen to this interview of Joan Turner, author of On Writtenness: The Cultural Politics of Academic Writing (Bloomsbury Academic 2018). We talk about writers, writing, writers writing, unwritten subtexts, and …
Finance March 30, 2021

Boom and Bust

A Global History of Financial Bubbles

William Quinn and John D. Turner

Hosted by Daniel Peris
Are we in the midst of a financial bubble? Do the current valuations of the electronic vehicle stocks or their SPACs make you raise an eyebrow?  The trouble with bubbles is that …
World Affairs March 29, 2021

Trouble of the World

Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital

Zach Sell

Hosted by Geoffrey Gordon
The middle decades of the 19th century witnessed the expansion of slavery and white settlement and dispossession of Indigenous lands west of the Mississippi River, the abolition of slavery in …
Language March 24, 2021

On the Offensive

Prejudice in Language Past and Present

Karen Stollznow

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
Whether framed as complaints about cancel culture or as increased awareness of prejudice, stories about offensive language are common in our daily news cycle. In On the Offensive: Prejudice in …
Sociology March 23, 2021

Becoming a Citizen

Linguistic Trials and Negotiations in the UK

Kamran Khan

Hosted by Nafeesa Andrabi
Citizenship is acquired and constructed through various mechanisms, including language tests, that require individuals to demonstrate a sufficient national identity. For some recent migrants, acquiring citizenship and passing rigorous language testing still …
Jewish Studies March 22, 2021

Yiddish

Biography of a Language

Jeffrey Shandler

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
The most widely spoken Jewish language on the eve of the Holocaust, Yiddish continues to play a significant role in Jewish life today, from Hasidim for whom it is a …
Literary Studies March 18, 2021

The Voice of Misery

A Continental Philosophy of Testimony

Gert-Jan van der Heiden

Hosted by Britton Edelen
In this episode, I interview Gert-Jan van der Heiden, Professor of Metaphysics and Philosophical Anthropology at Radboud University in Amsterdam, about his book, The Voice of Misery: A Continental Philosophy …
Language March 16, 2021

Talk about Faith

How Debate and Conversation Shape Belief

Stephen Pihlaja

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
Religious people have a range of new media in which they can share their beliefs and reflect on what it means to believe, to act, and to be members of …
Anthropology March 9, 2021

Passing

Two Publics in a Mexican Border City

Rihan Yeh

Hosted by Amir Lehman
Tijuana is the largest of Mexico’s northern border cities, and although it has struggled during the United States’ dramatic escalation of border enforcement, it nonetheless remains deeply connected with California …
Sociology March 1, 2021

What the Signs Say

Language, Gentrification, and Place-Making in Brooklyn

Shonna Trinch and Edward Snajdr

Hosted by Richard Ocejo
Two stores sit side-by-side. One with signage overflowing with text: a full list of business services (income tax returns, notary public, a variety of insurance) on the storefront, twenty-two words …
South Asian Studies February 26, 2021

Rethinking Markets in Modern India

Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction

A. Gandhi, B. Harriss-White, D. E. Haynes and S. Schwecke

Hosted by Saronik Bosu
Modern markets and exchange, compared with other social and political spheres, are seen through technical abstractions. This intellectual compartmentalization has political consequences: if capitalism operates through arcane, objective, and rational …
History February 26, 2021

Pirating and Publishing

The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment

Robert Darnton

Hosted by Zachary McCulley
In the late-18th century, a group of publishers in what historian Robert Darnton calls the "Fertile Crescent" — countries located along the French border, stretching from Holland to Switzerland — …
Scholarly Communication February 24, 2021

Writing in Disciplines

A Discussion with Shyam Sharma

Shyam Sharma

Hosted by Daniel Shea
Listen to this interview of Shyam Sharma, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University. We talk about how mutually appreciative …
Jewish Studies February 23, 2021

How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish

Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are based on …
Psychoanalysis February 17, 2021

The Autistic Subject

On the Threshold of Language

Leon S. Brenner

Hosted by Jordan Osserman
Leon Brenner's The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) makes a forceful case for the relevance of Lacanian psychoanalysis in the understanding and treatment of autism …