Support Kritika | Support H-Net | Buy Books Here | Join the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!
- African Studies
- African American Studies
- American Politics
- American Studies
- American South
- American West
- Asian American Studies
- Australian and New Zealand Studies
- British Studies
- Canadian Studies
- Caribbean Studies
- Central Asian Studies
- Chinese Studies
- East Asian Studies
- Eastern European Studies
- European Politics
- French Studies
- German Studies
- Iberian Studies
- India Studies
- Indian Ocean World
- Indigenous Studies
- Iranian Studies
- Irish Studies
- Israel Studies
- Italian Studies
- Japanese Studies
- Korean Studies
- Latino Studies
- Latin American Studies
- Mexican Studies
- Middle Eastern Studies
- Pacific Studies
- Polish Studies
- Russian and Eurasian Studies
- Southeast Asian Studies
- South Asian Studies
- Taiwan Studies
- Turkish Studies
- Ukrainian Studies
- Western European Studies
- World Affairs
- Animal Studies
- Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Business, Management, and Marketing
- Media and Communications
- Critical Theory
- Disability Studies
- Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
- Education
- Economics
- Finance
- Geography
- Gender Studies
- Genocide Studies
- Higher Education
- Human Rights
- Journalism
- Language and Translation
- Law
- LGBTQ+ Studies
- National Security
- Philanthropy
- Philosophy
- Policing, Incarceration, and Reform
- Political Science
- Politics & Polemics
- Public Policy
- Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work
- Sociology
- Sound Studies
- Sports
- Urban Studies
- Big Ideas
- Celebration Studies
- Co-Authored
- Cover Story
- Historical Materialism
- History Ex Silo
- Interpretive Political and Social Science
- Invested Investor
- Landscape Architecture
- Mormonism
- NBN Book of the Day
- NBN Seminar
- New Books with Miranda Melcher
- On the Cusp: Between Strategy and Ethics
- Postscript: Conversations on Politics and Political Science
- Practical History
- Preparing for Life After Grad School
- Psychology and Climate Change
- Syriac Studies
- The Chair: In The Room at the Fed
- Oceanic Studies
About John Yargo
I am Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. I earned my PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. My specializations are early modern literature, the environmental humanities, and critical race studies. My dissertation explores early modern representations of environmental catastrophe, and my peer-reviewed articles have been published or are forthcoming in Early Theatre, Studies in Philology, The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, and Shakespeare Studies.More information at johnyargo.com
John Yargo is Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His specializations are early modern literature, the environmental humanities, and critical race studies. His dissertation explores early modern representations of environmental catastrophe, including William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, and John Milton's Paradise Lost. He has published in Early Theatre, Studies in Philology, The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, and Shakespeare Studies.
NBN Episodes hosted by John:
March 4, 2026
Cycle of Dreams and Piers Plowman: A New Annotated Edition of the A-Text
My guest today is Eric Weiskott, Professor of English at Boston College. Eric has previously published Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650…
February 7, 2026
Black Shakespeare
In Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Ian Smith urges readers of Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and …
December 7, 2025
What Can I Get Out of This?
I’m excited to talk to Carlo Rotella today. Carlo is Professor of English at Boston College. His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End: P…
November 8, 2025
The Trials of Orpheus
Today’s guest is Jenny Mann, who has a new book titled The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime (Princeton University Pres…
August 27, 2025
Austerity Measures
My guest today is Anders M. Greene-Crow. Anders teaches at the Woods College of Advancing Studies and is a former Professor of English at Boston Colle…
July 9, 2025
Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory
My guest today is Jyotsna Singh, Professor Emerita of English at Michigan State University. She has written numerous books including Colonial Narrativ…
December 10, 2024
Milton's Moving Bodies
Today, I am excited to talk to Marissa Greenberg and Rachel Trubowitz about the new collection of essays they have edited. Milton’s Moving Bodies (Nor…
April 8, 2024
Sailing without Ahab
When I decided to try my hand at interviewing authors for the New Books Network, one of my dream guests was Steve Mentz. Steve’s work in the environme…
March 26, 2024
Irish Materialisms
Coins, flax, spinning wheels, mud, pigs. Each of these objects were ubiquitous in the premodern cultural representation of the Irish. Through case stu…
January 15, 2024
Inkface
In his new book Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery (University of Virginia Press, 2023), Miles P. Grier argues that b…
December 19, 2023
Criticism and Truth
Today’s guest is Jonathan Kramnick, the author of a new book, Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies (University of Chicago Press, 2023). …
November 9, 2023
The Activist Humanist
W. H. Auden once said, “Poetry makes nothing happen.” Auden’s quote has been used for so many purposes, it might be worth remembering what he meant. A…
November 8, 2023
Seamus Heaney’s Afterlives
In 1995, Seamus Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. During his speech, he explained that the adequacy of lyric poetry spoke to the “‘tem…
November 4, 2023
The Cambridge Companion to Comics
Today’s guest is Maaheen Ahmed, who has edited a new collection of essays, The Cambridge Companion to Comics (Cambridge University Press, 2023). This …
September 30, 2023
Possible Knowledge
Debapriya Sarkar’s new book, titled Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) is a study of how poet…
September 16, 2023
Emergency
Today’s guest is Edgar Garcia. Garcia’s new book Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Emergency …
September 12, 2023
But Have You Read the Book?
Published earlier this year from Running Press, Kristen Lopez’s But Have You Read the Book?: 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films looks …
September 6, 2023
Matter and Making in Early English Poetry
Is the raw material of literature the paper, ink, vellum, paphyrus, and increasingly electronic data that it is inscribed on? Or is the stuff of liter…
September 1, 2023
Character as Form
Today’s guest is Aaron Kunin, Professor of English at Pomona College. We will discuss two books Aaron published in 2019: the first is Character as For…
August 29, 2023
Book Madness
In February 1848, a book auction took place in Astor House, No. 7, on the corner of Broadway and Vesey in lower Manhattan, New York. By all accounts, …
August 27, 2023
Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America
Vanessa I. Corredera’s book Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America (Edinburgh Univeristy Press, 2022) looks at how that seventeenth-…
August 26, 2023
Forms of Contention
As I learned from Hollis Robbins’s monograph Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition (U Georgia Press, 2020), there h…
August 24, 2023
Noah's Arkive
At a moment when the world has tipped over into irreversible violence and corruption, a divinity contacts a righteous man. The man is directed to buil…
August 17, 2023
The New Mutants
Today’s guest is Ramzi Fawaz, the Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published by NYU Press in 2016, The New Mutants:…