New Books in Literary Studies

Feb 04 2025 2344 ep. 53 mins 809
New Books in Literary Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Literature about their New Books

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

  Arts
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Ann Schmiesing, "The Brothers Grimm: A Biography" (Yale UP, 2024)

Feb 04 2025 51 mins  
Ann Schmiesing, Ph.D. is Professor of German and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, with research interests spanning 18th and 19th-century German and Norwegian literature and culture. In our interview we discuss her new book, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography (Yale UP, 2024), their first biography in over half a century. We talk about what led her to Germanic

D. C. Helmuth, "Hidden Libraries: The World's Most Unusual Book Depositories" (Lonely Planet, 2024)

Feb 04 2025 41 mins  
In Hidden Libraries: The World’s Most Unusual Book Depositories (Lonely Planet, 2024) by Diana Helmuth, discover 50 of the world's most magnificent hidden libraries - each with a unique and uplifting story to tell - featuring a foreword by librarian, bestselling author, and literary critic Nancy Pearl. Book swap your latest read in a cool 1950s style fridge in New Zealand or hike

Alexis Wolf, "Transnational Women Writers in the Wilmot Coterie, 1798-1840" (Boydell Press, 2024)

Feb 03 2025 38 mins  
What were two Irish sisters doing in Russia during the early years of the nineteenth century, editing the French-language memoirs of a princess who had been a close confidante of Catherine the Great? Author Alexis Wolf is in conversation with Duncan McCargo about a remarkable transnational story she has unearthed through meticulous archival research. Transnational Women Writers in

Sara Burdorff, "Maternity, Monstrosity, and Heroic (Im)mortality from Homer to Shakespeare" (Amsterdam UP, 2025)

Feb 02 2025 38 mins  
Sara Burdorff joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Maternity, Monstrosity and Heroic (Im)mortality from Homer to Shakespeare (Amsterdam University Press, 2025). This work uses an adaptation of monster theory to rethink the foundations of epic-heroic immortality. Rather than focusing on a specific monster or monsters, the author identifies the "belly-monstrous" as a crucial

Amanda Lagji, "Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time: Waiting for Now" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

Feb 01 2025 47 mins  
Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time: Waiting for Now (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) by Dr. Amanda Lagji reveals the fundamental, constitutive role of the temporal dimensions of waiting in colonial regimes of time, as well as in postcolonial framings of time, history and agency. Drawing from critical time and postcolonial studies alike, this book argues that the temporality o

About Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Jan 30 2025 66 mins  
Today I talked to Ben Baer and Smaran Dayal about About Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. Pioneering Indian Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain wrote speculative fiction, manifestoes, radical reportage, and incisive essays that transformed her experience of enforced segregation into unique interventions against gender oppression everywhere. He

Tolkien, Philosopher of War: A Conversation with Graham McAleer

Jan 30 2025 50 mins  
In this episode, we explore the profound philosophical and theological dimensions of J.R.R. Tolkien's work, particularly his views on war. In his book Tolkien, Philosopher of War (Catholic University of America Press, 2024), McAleer uncovers Tolkien's critique of Enlightenment thought and his deep concern with the apocalyptic politics of his time. He argues that Tolkien’s metaphy

Lennard J. Davis, "Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It" (Duke UP, 2024)

Jan 29 2025 72 mins  
For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, or James Agee. This has resulted in overwhelming depictions of poor people as living abject, violent lives in filthy and degrading conditions. In Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It (Duke UP,

The Cambridge Centennial Edition of The Great Gatsby

Jan 25 2025 30 mins  
The Great Gatsby is often called the great American novel. Emblematic of an entire era, F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic tale of illicit desire, grand illusions, and lost dreams is rendered in a lyrical prose that revives a vanished world of glittering parties and vibrant jazz, where money and deceit walk hand in hand. Rich in humor, sharply observant of status and class, the book tel

Andrew Smith, "Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

Jan 24 2025 72 mins  
Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like poetry. These are the prompts which begin Andrew Smith’s Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures (2024, Palgrave Macmillan). Drawing upon discussions with working class readers of poetry, and interviews with unpublished p