New Books Network
Intellectual History
Performing Arts June 25, 2021

From Aphra Behn to Fun Home

A Cultural History of Feminist Theater

Carey Purcell

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Theatre has long been considered a feminine interest for which women consistently purchase the majority of tickets, while the shows they are seeing typically are written and brought to the …

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Law June 25, 2021

Lawmaking Under Pressure

International Humanitarian Law and Internal Armed Conflict

Giovanni Mantilla

Hosted by Yi Ning Chang
Giovanni Mantilla’s new book, Lawmaking under Pressure: International Humanitarian Law and Internal Armed Conflict (Cornell University Press, 2020), traces the origins and development of the international humanitarian treaty rules that …
Political Science June 24, 2021

The President Who Would Not Be King

Executive Power under the Constitution

Michael W. McConnell

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Michael McConnell, the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford University Law School and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, has written an …
Christian Studies June 23, 2021

John Calvin in Context

R. Ward Holder

Hosted by Zachary McCulley
John Calvin in Context (Cambridge UP, 2019) offers a comprehensive overview of Calvin's world. Including essays from social, cultural, feminist, and intellectual historians, each specially commissioned for this volume, the book …
Christian Studies June 22, 2021

Duplex Regnum Christi

Christ's Twofold Kingdom in Reformed Theology

Jonathon D. Beeke

Hosted by Crawford Gribben
In Duplex Regnum Christi: Christ's Twofold Kingdom in Reformed Theology (Brill, 2020), Jonathon D. Beeke surveys the development of thinking among early modern Reformed theologians about the relationship between religion and …
Indian Religions June 21, 2021

Feminine Journeys of the Mahabharata

Hindu Women in History, Text, and Practice

Lavanya Vemsani

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
The Mahabharata preserves powerful journeys of women recognized as the feminine divine and the feminine heroic in the larger culture of India. Each journey upholds the unique aspects of women's …
American Studies June 14, 2021

The Trials of Thomas Morton

An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England

Peter C. Mancall

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
Every good story needs a villain, and some of the early chroniclers of the pilgrim and puritan settlements found all they needed for this type of character in Thomas Morton. Peter …
Intellectual History June 10, 2021

Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought

Tae-Yeoun Keum

Hosted by Tejas Parasher
Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought (Harvard UP, 2020) is an ambitious reinterpretation and defense of Plato’s basic enterprise and influence, arguing that the power of his myths …
Political Science June 10, 2021

Against Demagogues

What Aristophanes Can Teach Us about the Perils of Populism and the Fate of Democracy

Robert C. Bartlett

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Political Theorist Robert Bartlett spoke with the New Books in Political Science podcast about two of his recent publications, which take on translating the work of two distinct classical thinkers …
Indian Religions June 10, 2021

The Reluctant Family Man

Shiva in Everyday Life

Chitgopekar Nilima

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
He's the destroyer of evil, the pervasive one in whom all things lie. He is brilliant, terrifying, wild and beneficent. He is both an ascetic and a householder, both a …
Literary Studies June 8, 2021

Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive

Bethany Hicok

Hosted by Duncan McCargo
What more can we learn about legendary American writer Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79), dubbed by Bethany Hicok “the most stunning poet of the twentieth century”, by exploring the wonderful archives of her …
Art June 8, 2021

Artemisia Gentileschi and Feminism in Early Modern Europe

Mary D. Garrard

Hosted by Allison Leigh
Artemisia Gentileschi is by far the most famous woman artist of the premodern era. Her art addressed issues that resonate today, such as sexual violence and women’s problematic relationship to …
Politics & Polemics June 8, 2021

Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes

Steven B. Smith

Hosted by Jack Petranker
In a time when questions about patriotism, nationalism, multiculturalism, and the like are sure to stir up controversy, Steven Smith offers a careful, balanced defense of what he calls “enlightened …
History June 7, 2021

The Free World

Art and Thought in the Cold War

Louis Menand

Hosted by Ryan Tripp
In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Metaphysical Club, acclaimed scholar and critic Louis Menand, Professor of English at Harvard University and staff writer at The New Yorker, offers a new intellectual …
Science, Technology, and Society June 7, 2021

Objectivity

Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison

Hosted by Sarah Kearns
Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). This work traces the historical and …
Russian and Eurasian Studies June 4, 2021

Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism

Finding Christ among the Karamazovs

Paul J. Contino

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Paul Contino’s Catholic reading of Dostoevsky’s final masterwork, premised on the novel’s “powerful capacity to inspire readers to be better people”, follows hero Alyosha Karamazov’s spiritual maturation as a “monk …
Christian Studies June 4, 2021

Luther, Conflict, and Christendom

Reformation Europe and Christianity in the West

Christopher Ocker

Hosted by Zachary McCulley
Martin Luther - monk, priest, intellectual, or revolutionary - has been a controversial figure since the sixteenth century. Most studies of Luther stress his personality, his ideas, and his ambitions …
Psychoanalysis June 3, 2021

Conversations with Lacan

Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan

Sergio Benvenuto

Hosted by Cassandra Seltman
Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan (Routledge, 2019)brings a unique, non-partisan approach to the work of Jacques Lacan, linking his psychoanalytic theory and ideas to broader debates in philosophy …
Russian and Eurasian Studies June 3, 2021

Revising the Revolution

The Unmaking of Russia's Official History of 1917

Larry E. Holmes

Hosted by Samantha Lomb
The clash between scholarship and politics—between truth and propaganda— had always been a conflict of great importance. In the 1920s the Commission for the Collection, Study, and Publication of Materials …
History June 3, 2021

Socialism As a Secular Creed

A Modern Global History

Andrei Znamenski

Hosted by Mark Klobas
The predominantly secular focus of socialism can often obscure the parts of its ideology that reflect the elements it inherited from Western religious thinking. In Socialism as a Secular Creed …