New Books in Literary Studies
1,623 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 18 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Literature about their New Books
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Episodes
Hongwei Bao, "Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture Under Postsocialism" (Routledge, 2020)
October 26, 2022 08:00 - 58 minutesIn Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture Under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020), associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Nottingham Hongwei Bao returns with a theory-driven, methodologically-diverse, empathetic, and insightful analysis of LGBTQ literature and visual culture in postsocialist China. A thorough introduction positions Bao as a participant observer and explores key concepts including “postsocialist metamorphosis,” defined as “the ...
Jose O. Fernandez, "Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures" (Ohio State UP, 2022)
October 26, 2022 08:00 - 43 minutesIn Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures (Ohio State University Press, 2022), Jose O. Fernandez examines thematic, aesthetic, historical, and cultural commonalities among post-1960s Black and Latinx writers, showing how such similarities have propelled their fight against social, cultural, and literary marginalization by engaging, adopting, and subverting elements from the larger American literary tradition. Drawing on the work of scholars in both literary trad...
On Samuel Smiles' "Self-Help"
October 26, 2022 08:00 - 26 minutesSamuel Smiles’ Self-Help isn’t just an advice manual. It represents the invention of a genre, and not a moment too soon. Smiles was writing at a time when work conditions were extremely poor, and people were looking for ways to educate themselves and improve their conditions. Although Smiles may have written Self-Help with one particular society’s troubles in mind, his advice swiftly travelled around the globe to places like Japan and Egypt. Beth Blum is an assistant professor of English at H...
Kenyon Gradert, "Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
October 25, 2022 08:00 - 39 minutesModern imagination of the Puritans typically casts them in a repressive, conservative light. But that wasn't always the case. Abolitionist activists in the nineteenth century, especially in New England, understood their Puritan heritage as one with radical political and spiritual responsibilities. Kenyon Gradert's new book, Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination (U Chicago Press, 2020) tells the surprising story of unexpected connections between the English Civil Wars and the literar...
Andrea Barrett, "Natural History: Stories" (Norton, 2022)
October 25, 2022 08:00 - 35 minutesAndrea Barrett began writing fiction seriously in her thirties and published her first novel, Lucid Stars, in 1988. She’s particularly well known as a writer of historical fiction. Barrett, whose work reflects her lifelong interest in science and natural history, received the National Book Award for her fifth book, Ship Fever, a collection of stories featuring scientists, doctors, and naturalists. In 2001 she received a MacArthur Fellowship and was also a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scho...
Leonardo da Vinci and Vassari’s "Lives of the Painters"
October 25, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn this episode of the Vault, we hear Harry Berger’s talk about Leonardo da Vinci and Vassari’s "Lives of the Painters." Harry Berger was a scholar of Renaissance English literature who wrote books about art history, anthropology, and philosophy. He taught at UC Santa Cruz, where he was an emeritus professor until he died in 2021, at age 96. Since 1977, the New York Institute for the Humanities has brought together distinguished scholars, writers, artists, and publishing professionals to fost...
On Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis' "The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas"
October 24, 2022 08:00 - 33 minutesThe Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas is such a complex and clever allegory of Brazilian society that many readers didn’t initially understand just how searing its critique really was. Its author, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, was the grandson of former slaves writing to and about the slaveholding class at the time and is widely regarded as the most prominent Brazilian writer of all time. His writing is noted for its formal experimentation, and while this book is certainly funny and self-awa...
Yoshiko Okuyama, "Reframing Disability in Manga" (U Hawaii Press, 2020)
October 24, 2022 08:00 - 45 minutesReframing Disability in Manga (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) analyzes popular Japanese manga published from the 1990s to the present that portray the everyday lives of adults and children with disabilities in an ableist society. It focuses on five representative conditions currently classified as shōgai (disabilities) in Japan―deafness, blindness, paraplegia, autism, and gender identity disorder―and explores the complexities and sociocultural issues surrounding each. Author Yoshiko Okuyam...
Halloween Special: Michel de Montaigne’s Cat
October 24, 2022 08:00 - 13 minutesIn part one of our Halloween Special on Cats, Kim talks with John Guilliory about Montaigne’s essay “An Apology for Raymond Sebond.” Montaigne asks us: “When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?” John Guillory is a professor of English at New York University. He is a scholar of Renaissance literature, who is known for his work on why we read what we read, in Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (University of Chica...
On Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
October 21, 2022 08:00 - 31 minutesBy the early 19th century, slavery was still a brutal reality in southern U.S. states, and a growing movement to abolish slavery nationwide was taking hold. In 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe published her first novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was intended to be an anti-slavery book, to provide a positive view of Black people in America. But it also has another, more complicated legacy, unintentionally birthing new racist stereotypes. Professor Robin Bernstein is a Professor of African and African A...
Chelsea Martin, "Tell Me I'm An Artist" (Soft Skull Press, 2022)
October 21, 2022 08:00 - 32 minutesToday I talked to Chelsea Martin's new book Tell Me I'm An Artist (Soft Skull Press, 2022). Martin's first novel, tell me i'm an artist, is published with Soft Skull Press. Her previous books include caca dolce (Soft Skull, 2017), even though i don't miss you (short flight/long drive, 2013), and others. She currently lives in spokane, wa with her husband and child. Recommended Books: Emma Bolden, The Tiger and the Cage Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor ...
On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s "The Brothers Karamazov"
October 20, 2022 08:00 - 44 minutesThe Brothers Karmazov is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s last novel. In it, he presents his ideas about culture, the human soul, and God, and he uses his characters, the brothers Ivan, Dimitri, and Alyosha, as examples of his philosophical ideas. These brothers have to reconcile with the past, but also for their part in it. This book was a response to the conditions in Russia at the time it was written. And since then, it’s continued to shape philosophy itself. Yuri Corrigan is an Associate Professor of ...
4.4 “A short, sharp punch to the face”: José Revueltas’ The Hole (El Apando) with Alia Trabucco Zerán and Sophie Hughes.
October 20, 2022 08:00 - 53 minutesAlia Trabucco Zerán, award-winning author of The Remainder (La Resta), and Women Who Kill (Las Homicidas), and Sophie Hughes, Alia’s translator and finalist for the International Booker Prize talk with Novel Dialogue host Chris Holmes about a novel that has shaped their lives as writers and thinkers: The Hole by José Revueltas. Sophie and Alia discuss how The Hole, written while Revueltas was held in the infamous Lecumberri prison, purposefully makes readers feel lost in a small, confined spa...
Martin Fárek, "India in the Eyes of Europeans: Conceptualization of Religion in Theology and Oriental Studies" (Karolinum Press, Charles University, 2021)
October 20, 2022 08:00 - 54 minutesMartin Fárek's India in the Eyes of Europeans: Conceptualization of Religion in Theology and Oriental Studies (Karolinum Press, Charles University, 2021) is centred around the claim that although the research in Oriental and religious studies seemingly presents unbiased, objective interpretations of Indian traditions, it really puts forward distorted images which primarily reflect the researchers’ own European culture. A thorough examination demonstrates to what extent Oriental studies as wel...
91* Leah Price on Children’s Books: Turning Back the Clock on “Adulting” (EF, JP)
October 20, 2022 08:00 - 31 minutesWhat do children love most about books? Leaving their mark on inviting white spaces? Or that enchanting feeling when a book marks them as its own, taking them off to where the wild things are? Back in 2021, Elizabeth and John invited illustrious and illuminating book historian Leah Price to decode childhood reading past and present. The conversation explores the tactile and textual properties of great children’s books and debate adult fondness for juvenile literature. Leah asks if identifying...
Cameron Awkward-Rich, "The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment" (Duke UP, 2022)
October 19, 2022 08:00 - 58 minutesIn The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment (Duke UP, 2022), Cameron Awkward-Rich thinks with the bad feelings and mad habits of thought that persist in both transphobic discourse and trans cultural production. Observing that trans studies was founded on a split from and disavowal of madness, illness, and disability, Awkward-Rich argues for and models a trans criticism that works against this disavowal. By tracing the coproduction of the categories of disabled and transgender in the...
Matthew W. King, "In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms" (Columbia UP, 2022)
October 19, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWhat would an “anti-field history” of Buddhist Studies look like? What does the social history of knowledge look like when it both includes and exceeds the West/Nonwest binary, the ethnonational subject, the secular humanist gaze, and the moral narratives and metaphysical content of modernism? Matt W. King explores these critical questions and models innovative approaches in his second monograph, In the Forest of the Blind (Columbia University Press 2022), which uses Faxian’s Record of Buddhi...
Arthur Bradley, "Unbearable Life: A Genealogy of Political Erasure" (Columbia UP, 2019)
October 18, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn ancient Rome, any citizen who had brought disgrace upon the state could be subject to a judgment believed to be worse than death: damnatio memoriae, condemnation of memory. The Senate would decree that every trace of the citizen's existence be removed from the city as if they had never existed in the first place. Once reserved for individuals, damnatio memoriae in different forms now extends to social classes, racial and ethnic groups, and even entire peoples. In modern times, the condemne...
Robert Steven Levine et al., "The Norton Anthology of American Literature" (Norton, 2022)
October 18, 2022 08:00 - 47 minutesThe Tenth Edition introduces diverse, compelling, relevant texts-from Civil War songs and stories to The Turn of the Screw to The Great Gatsby to poems by Juan Felipe Herrera and Claudia Rankine to a science fiction cluster featuring Octavia Butler and N. K. Jemisin. And continuing its course of innovative and market-responsive changes, the anthology now offers resources to help instructors meet today's teaching challenges. Chief among these resources is InQuizitive, Norton's award-winning le...
Anita Wohlmann, "Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)
October 18, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourMetaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused (Edinburgh UP, 2022) argues that even when a metaphor appears problematic and limiting, it need not be dropped or dismissed. Metaphors are not inherently harmful or beneficial; instead, they can be used in unexpected and creative ways. This book analyses the illness writing of contemporary North American writers who reimagine and reappropriate the supposedly harmful metaphor 'illness is a fight' and shows how Susan Sontag, Audre Lorde, Anat...
Radicalism, Humility, and Racism in America
October 17, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourToday’s episode focuses on the new book by Lydia Moland, who is a Professor of Philosophy at Colby College. Her book, Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life (U Chicago Press, 2022) offers a powerful window into questions of humility and its relationship to racism and other forms of discrimination in American history. We talk about Child’s ideas, particularly as they relate to many of the issue facing contemporary American society. John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UMass Lo...
Siobhan Lambert-Hurley et al., "Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women" (Indiana UP, 2022)
October 14, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourSiobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma's edited anthology Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women (Indiana University Press 2022) is a collection of travel writings from the late 19th century to the early and mid-20th century. It captures the fascinating lives of diverse Muslim women as they travelled for religious pilgrimage, political reasons, education, and for leisure. This anthology not only recovers the voices of women from a broad range of languages, Urd...
Ellen Doré Watson, “In Which Raging Weather is a Gift," The Common magazine (Spring, 2022)
October 14, 2022 08:00 - 32 minutesEllen Doré Watson speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her poem “In Which Raging Weather is a Gift,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. Ellen talks about the importance of letting a poem surprise you as the first draft comes together. She also discusses her thoughts on the revision process, her work translating poetry and prose, and the years she spent running the Smith College Poetry Center. Ellen Doré Watson’s fifth full-length collection is pray me stay eager. Her poems h...
On Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"
October 14, 2022 08:00 - 42 minutesJoseph Conrad, who published 20 books and several best-sellers by the time of his death, was also a sailor. Heart of Darkness follows seaman Charles Marlow’s journey down a river in Africa. It is Conrad’s most well-known book today. This tale of colonialism in Africa is shrouded in mystery, and the book itself has fallen in and out of favor since its publication. Harvard professor Maya Jassanoff discusses why Heart of Darkness is an exemplar of what it means to read a text within its historic...
Sandeep Banerjee, "Space, Utopia and Indian Decolonization: Literary Pre-Figurations of the Postcolony" (Routledge, 2021)
October 14, 2022 08:00 - 38 minutesSandeep Banerjee's book Space, Utopia and Indian Decolonization: Literary Pre-Figurations of the Postcolony (Routledge, 2021) illuminates the spatial utopianism of South Asian anti-colonial texts by showing how they refuse colonial spatial imaginaries to re-imagine the British Indian colony as the postcolony in diverse and contested ways. Focusing on the literary field of South Asia between, largely, the 1860s and 1920s, it underlines the centrality of literary imagination and representation ...
Ramzi Fawaz, "Queer Forms" (NYU Press, 2022)
October 13, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourRamzi Fawaz, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a new book that weaves together the more contemporary history of feminism and women’s liberation, the gay liberation movement, feminist and queer theory, and iconic popular culture artifacts in order to understand gendered and sexual forms in context of gender and sexual fluidity. This is a brilliant book, interdisciplinary in scope and approach, taking the reader on a journey through theoretical frameworks and inte...
Want to Talk to People about Books? Here's How....
October 13, 2022 08:00 - 38 minutesRebel Book Club is an online and in-person book club. Each month, over 1,000 people get together to discuss a non-fiction book, occasionally with the author as a participant. For new members, use code: REBELREADER Ben Keene is an entrepreneur, author, and food journalist. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork...
Bruce Robbins, "Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction" (Stanford UP, 2022)
October 11, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWhat is criticism for? Over the past few decades, violent disagreements over that question in the academy have burst into the news media. These conflicts have renewed the Culture Wars over the legacy of the 1960s, becoming entangled in national politics and leading to a new set of questions. Does a concern with race, gender, and sexuality, with unacknowledged power and privilege, with identity, give present critics the right to criticize the great works of the past? If we have learned to see ...
Eric Hobsbawm on "Literacy and the Tower of Babel"
October 10, 2022 08:00 - 23 minutesIn this episode from the Vault, we hear from historian Eric Hobsbawm, a frequent visitor at the New York Institute for the Humanities. His talk, Literacy and the Tower of Babel, took place in November 1984. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
On Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House"
October 10, 2022 08:00 - 29 minutesWatching our favorite TV shows and movies today, it’s easy to take the relatable characters and familiar settings for granted. But when Henrik Ibsen debuted his play A Doll’s House, realism was a shocking, new approach. Professor Derek Miller discusses what realism can teach us about our reality and how A Doll’s House rocked the 19th century theatre scene. Derek Miller is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He teaches in the English department as well...
Carles Prado-Fonts, "Secondhand China: Spain, the East, and the Politics of Translation" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
October 07, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourToday I spoke with Carles Prado-Fonts on his recently published book Secondhand China: Spain, the East, and the Politics of Translation (Northwestern UP, 2022). This transcultural study of cultural production brings to light the ways Spanish literature imagined China by relying on English- and French-language sources. Carles Prado-Fonts examines how the simultaneous dependence on and obscuring of translation in these cross-cultural representations created the illusion of a homogeneous West. H...
Sarah Fatima Waheed, "Hidden Histories of Pakistan: Censorship, Literature, and Secular Nationalism in Late Colonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
October 07, 2022 08:00 - 59 minutesCensorship, Urdu literature, Islam, and progressive secular nationalisms in colonial India and Pakistan have a complex, intertwined history. Sarah Waheed, Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina, offers a timely examination of the role of progressive Muslim intellectuals in the Pakistan movement in her new book, Hidden Histories of Pakistan: Censorship, Literature, and Secular Nationalism in Late Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, 2022). She delves into how these left...
On John Hersey's "Hiroshima"
October 07, 2022 08:00 - 31 minutesIn August of 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Less than a year later, American journalist John Hersey traveled to Hiroshima and interviewed survivors of the bombing. The subsequent article was published by The New Yorker in 1946. Hiroshima was published as a book two months later. MIT Professor Christopher Capozzola discusses why he thinks every American should read Hiroshima. Christopher Capozzola is a professor of History at MIT....
A. M. Homes, "The Unfolding" (Viking, 2022)
October 07, 2022 08:00 - 48 minutesA. M. Homes most recent book is The Unfolding (Viking, 2022). Her previous work includes, This Book Will Save Your Life, which won the 2013 Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Days of Awe, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the bestselling memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter along with a travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist’...
Jennifer Wenzel, "The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature" (Fordham UP, 2019)
October 07, 2022 08:00 - 53 minutesHow do literature and other cultural forms shape how we imagine the planet, for better or worse? In this rich, original, and long awaited book, Jennifer Wenzel tackles the formal innovations, rhetorical appeals, and sociological imbrications of world literature that might help us confront unevenly distributed environmental crises, including global warming. The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature (Fordham UP, 2019) argues that assumptions about what nature is are a...
Emelia Quinn, "Reading Veganism: The Monstrous Vegan, 1818 to Present" (Oxford UP, 2021)
October 06, 2022 08:00 - 46 minutesReading Veganism: The Monstrous Vegan, 1818 to Present (Oxford UP, 2021) focuses on the iteration of the trope of ‘the monstrous vegan’ across 200 years of Anglophone literature. Explicating, through such monsters, veganism’s relation to utopian longing and challenge to the conceptual category of the ‘human’, the book explores ways in which ethical identities can be written, represented, and transmitted. Reading Veganism proposes that we can recognize and identify the monstrous vegan in relat...
On Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji"
October 06, 2022 08:00 - 27 minutesWe don’t even know the real name of the 11th century author Murasaki Shikibu. But we do know that her book, The Tale of Genji, is arguably one of the most influential Japanese texts to date. Genji quickly captured its readers’ imaginations with political intrigue and court drama, but it can also be read as an astute critique of Japanese elite society. Reginald Jackson is an associate professor of Pre-modern Japanese Literature and Performance at the University of Michigan. He is the author of...
4.3 Strange Beasts of Translation: Yan Ge and Jeremy Tiang in Conversation
October 06, 2022 08:00 - 50 minutesYan Ge and Jeremy Tiang are both writers who accumulate languages. Sitting down with host Emily Hyde, they discuss their work in and across Chinese and English, but you’ll also hear them on Sichuanese, the dialect of Mandarin spoken in Yan Ge’s native Sichuan province, and on the Queen’s English as it operates in Singapore, where Jeremy grew up. Yan is an acclaimed writer in China, where she began publishing at age 17. She now lives in the UK. Her novel Strange Beasts of China came out in Eng...
Asha Rogers, "State Sponsored Literature: Britain and Cultural Diversity After 1945" (Oxford UP, 2020)
October 06, 2022 08:00 - 43 minutesHow does the state support writers? In State Sponsored Literature: Britain and Cultural Diversity after 1945 (Oxford UP, 2020), Asha Rogers, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Postcolonial Literature at the University of Birmingham, explores the history of authors, institutions, and governments approach to literature in a changing, imperial and post-imperial, Britain. The book uses a wealth of examples, from key organisations such as the British Council and the Arts Council of Great Britain, thr...
Virtual Reality as Immersive Enclosure, with Paul Roquet (EF, JP)
October 06, 2022 08:00 - 38 minutesPaul Roquet is an MIT associate professor in media studies and Japan studies; his earlier work includes Ambient Media. It was his recent mind-bending The Immersive Enclosure that prompted John and Elizabeth to invite him to discuss the history of "head-mounted media" and the perceptual implications of virtual reality. Paul Elizabeth and John discuss the appeal of leaving actuality aside and how the desire to shut off immediate surroundings shapes VR's rollout in Japan. The discussion covers p...
Sanjay Krishnan, "V. S. Naipaul's Journeys: From Periphery to Center" (Columbia UP, 2020)
October 05, 2022 08:00 - 32 minutesThe author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) is one of the most acclaimed authors of the twentieth century. He is also one of the most controversial. Before settling in England, Naipaul grew up in Trinidad in an Indian immigrant community, and his depiction of colonized peoples has often been harshly judged by critics as unsympathetic, misguided, racist, and sexist. Yet other readers praise his work as co...
On Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Faust"
October 05, 2022 08:00 - 33 minutesSelling your soul to the devil in exchange for your deepest desire is a common theme in many western stories. The origins of this theme can be traced back to the German legend of Faust. The most well known version today is an epic poem, Faust, written by German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Part of the reason Faust continues to resonate with audiences is that everyone can relate to this feeling of striving against our own human limitations. John Hamilton is a professor of Comparative Liter...
On Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Faust"
October 05, 2022 08:00 - 33 minutesSelling your soul to the devil in exchange for your deepest desire is a common theme in many western stories. The origins of this theme can be traced back to the German legend of Faust. The most well known version today is an epic poem, Faust, written by German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Part of the reason Faust continues to resonate with audiences is that everyone can relate to this feeling of striving against our own human limitations. John Hamilton is a professor of Comparative Liter...
Carlos Rojas on Translating Yan Lianke
October 05, 2022 08:00 - 47 minutesIn this episode, Carlos Rojas shares with us his experience as a translator. He has translated several renowned authors in the Chinese-speaking world, including Yan Lianke, Yu Hua, Jia Pingwa, and Ng Kim Chew, into English. Among the literary translations, Carlos has translated ten books written by Yan Lianke, including novels, short stories, novellas, and essay collections. The books include Lenin’s Kisses (2012), The Four Books (2015), Marrow (2016), The Explosion Chronicles: A Novel (2017)...
Natalie J. Goodison, "Introducing the Medieval Swan" (U Wales Press, 2022)
October 04, 2022 08:00 - 52 minutesWhat comes to mind when we think of swans? Likely their beauty in domestic settings, their preserved status, their association with royalty, and possibly even the phrase ‘swan song’. Dr. Natalie Goodison’s Introducing the Medieval Swan (University of Wales Press, 2022) explores the emergence of each of these ideas, starting with an examination of the medieval swan in natural history, exploring classical writings and their medieval interpretations and demonstrating how the idea of a swan’s son...
On Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī's "Indications of Inimitability"
October 04, 2022 08:00 - 25 minutesGreat poetry or beautiful prose if often capable of challenging and delighting readers far more than dry, bland language. But why is that? Dalā’il al-Iʿjaz, or Indications of Inimitability, is a hugely influential Arabic text about exactly what it is that makes beautiful language beautiful. Its author, Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, used a theoretical, almost scientific method to demystify poetry and its lasting effects. Professor Alexander Key discusses why he’s working on the first English transl...
Celeste Ng, "Our Missing Hearts: A Novel" (Penguin, 2022)
October 04, 2022 08:00 - 42 minutesCeleste Ng is the author of three novels, Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You (2014), was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere (2017) was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a #1 Indie Next bestseller, and Amazon's Best Fiction Book of 2017. It w...
Sarah F. Derbew, "Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
October 04, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourSarah Derbew’s new book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2022) asks how should articulations of blackness from the fifth century BCE to the twenty-first century be properly read and interpreted? This important and timely book is the first concerted treatment of black skin color in the Greek literature and visual culture of antiquity. In charting representations in the Hellenic world of black Egyptians, Aithiopians, Indians, and Greeks, Derbew dexterously disentangles the...
Jenny C. Mann, "The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime" (Princeton UP, 2021)
October 03, 2022 08:00 - 49 minutesToday’s guest is Jenny Mann, who has a new book titled The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime (Princeton University Press, 2021). Jenny is Professor in both New York University’s English Department and the Gallatin School, and her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Folger Shakespeare Library. She is the author of the previous monograph, Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Vernacular Eloquence in Shakespeare’s England (Cornell University Press, 2012) a...
Clothes in Literature: A Talk by Anne Hollander
October 03, 2022 08:00 - 25 minutesIn this 2008 episode from the Vault we hear from fashion historian Anne Hollander, a longtime member of the Institute, and former president of the PEN American Center. Hollander was the author of Seeing Through Clothes, Moving Pictures, and Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress. At the time of her death, in 2014, she was working on a book about clothes in literature, which is the subject of this talk. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by be...