New Books in Intellectual History
Episodes
On Zionism and the Left: A Discussion with Author and Cultural Critic Susie Linfield
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“How has it come to this? How has ‘Zionist’…become the dirtiest word to the international Left?” Susie Linfield poses that ripe question at ...
Catherine Powell-Warren, "Gender and Self-Fashioning at the Intersection of Art and Science: Agnes Block, Botany, and Networks in the Dutch 17th Century" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jana Byars speaks with Catherine Powell-Warren about Gender and Self-Fashioning at the Intersection of Art and Science: Agnes Block, Botany, and Netw...
Guido Parietti, "On the Concept of Power: Possibility, Necessity, Politics" (Oxford UP, 2022)
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In On the Concept of Power: Possibility, Necessity, Politics (Oxford UP, 2022), Guido Parietti proposes a more proper definition of power--as the ...
Jakob Norberg, "The Brothers Grimm and the Making of German Nationalism" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are probably history’s most famous folklorists. Their collection of folk tales – the Children’s and Household Tales –...
Cassander L. Smith, "Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic" (LSU Press, 2023)
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic (LSU Press, 2023) by Dr. Cassander L. Smith examines the means through which people of African des...
Jan Westerhoff, "Candrakirti's Introduction to the Middle Way: A Guide" (Oxford UP, 2023)
20 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A proponent of the Madhyamaka tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism, Candrakīrti wrote several works, one of which, the Madhamakāvatāra, strongly influ...
The Future of Images of Human Evolution
20 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We are all familiar with the “march of progress” image - the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progr...
Kyle Gervais et al., "Lucan and Flavian Epic" (Brill, 2023)
19 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Roman imperial epic is enjoying a moment in the sun in the twenty-first century, as Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus have all bee...
Veena R. Howard, "Gandhi's Global Legacy: Moral Methods and Modern Challenges" (Lexington Books, 2022)
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
While there has been sustained interest in Gandhi's methods and continued academic inquiry, Gandhi's Global Legacy: Moral Methods and Modern Challeng...
Karen C. Pinto, "Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration" (U Chicago Press, 2016)
16 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The history of Islamic mapping is one of the new frontiers in the history of cartography. Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration (University of Chic...
Geoffrey Levin, "Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978" (Yale UP, 2023)
16 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American Jews began debating Palestinian rights issues even before Israel’s founding in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews wh...
Miles P. Grier, "Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Alexandra Filindra, "Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States has more guns than people and more gun violence than any Western democracy. Scholars in diverse fields interrogate why 21st centur...
Douglas S. Duckworth, "Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature" (Oxford UP, 2019)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature (Oxford UP, 2019) offers an engaging philosophical overview of Tibetan Buddhist thought. Integrating c...
Stéphane Jettot, "Selling Ancestry: Family Directories and the Commodification of Genealogy in Eighteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2023)
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Often cited but rarely studied in their own right, family directories allow a reconsideration of how ancestry and genealogy became an object of widesp...
Patrick R. O'Malley, "The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick R. O'Malley's book The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century (U Virginia Press, 2...
Jennifer Thomson, "The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health" (UNC Press, 2019)
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The first wealth is health, according to Emerson. Among health’s riches is its political potential. Few know this better than environmentalists. In ...
Krista K. Thomason, "Dancing with the Devil: Why Bad Feelings Make Life Good" (Oxford UP, 2023)
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How could a good life include one with anger, or jealousy, or spite? In Dancing with the Devil: Why Bad Feelings Make Life Good (Oxford UP, 2023), K...
Sandro R. Barros et al., "The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas: Queering Literature, Politics, and the Activist Curriculum" (U Florida Press, 2022)
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on the didactic nature of the work of Reinaldo Arenas, The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas: Queering Literature, Politics, and the Activist Cu...
Ofer Ashkenazi, "Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape" (U Michigan Press, 2020)
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape (U Michigan Press, 2020) studies an overlooked yet fundamental element of German po...
Christian Coseru on Perceiving Reality
08 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to perceive and just how capable are we of perceiving reality? This is a core question in the work of Christian Coseru, who is today...
Emma Kuby, "Political Survivors: The Resistance, the Cold War, and the Fight against Concentration Camps After 1945" (Cornell UP, 2019)
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Emma Kuby’s new book, Political Survivors: The Resistance, the Cold War, and the Fight against Concentration Camps After 1945 (Cornell UP, 2019) tra...
Sara Rahnama, "The Future Is Feminist: Women and Social Change in Interwar Algeria" (Cornell UP, 2023)
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Algerians of the 1920s and 30s imagined the future of their country, women’s liberation was foundational to their vision. From the first genera...
Eileen Botting, "The Wollstonecraftian Mind" (Routledge, 2019)
06 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Eileen Hunt Botting is Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame and co-editor with Sandrine Berges and Alan Coffee of the anthology The Wollstonec...
Pavel Khazanov, "The Russia that We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
06 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries overthrew the tsar of Russia and established a new, communist government, one that viewed the Imperial Russia of ol...
Roland Allen, "The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper" (Profile Books, 2023)
06 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did this simple invention come from? How did they revolutionise our lives, and why are they such powerful...
Kate Kirkpatrick, "Becoming Beauvoir: A Life" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
05 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Kirkpatrick a lecturer in Religion, Philosophy and Culture at King’s College London and author of Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (Bloomsbury Academi...
Martyn Whittock, "American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
05 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A vivid and illuminating new history--separate fact from fiction, myth from legend--exploring the early Vikings settlements in North America. Vikings ...
Claire Myers Owens and the Banned Book
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why did the New York Public Library ban a novel about women’s independence? What was the Human Potential Movement? And who was Claire Myers Owens? T...
Plot
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Pardis Dabashi tells us about plot. A plot consists of a change with stakes that establish norms. This seemingly simpl...
Marcy Norton, "The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492" (Harvard UP, 2024)
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024), Dr. Marcy Norton offers a dramatic new interpretation of t...
Jack Glazier, "Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race" (MSU Press, 2020)
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Radin was one of the founding generation of American cultural anthropologists: A student of Franz Boas, and famed ethnographer of the Winneb...
Katherine M. Marino, "Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement" (UNC Press, 2019)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine M. Marino is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an Int...
Noel Malcolm, "Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750" (Oxford UP, 2019)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Noel Malcolm’s captivating new book, Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 (Oxford University Pre...
Martha C. Nussbaum, "Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility" (Simon & Schuster, 2022)
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A revolutionary new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum. Animals are in tro...
Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, "Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Ohio University...
Khurram Hussain, "Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Delighting in Khurram Hussain’s consistently sparkling prose is reason enough to read his new book Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Chal...
Patrick Ffrench, "Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Suspicious of what he called the spectator's "sticky" adherence to the screen, Roland Barthes had a cautious attitude towards cinema. Falling into a h...
Jason Read, "The Politics of Transindividuality" (Haymarket Books, 2017)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many major political questions today revolve around questions of human nature; what sort of people we are and what sort of people we're capable of bei...
Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan, "The Cultural Roots of Slow Food: Peasants, Partisans, and the Landscape of Italian Resistance" (Lexington Books, 2023)
30 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Cultural Roots of Slow Food: Peasants, Partisans, and the Landscape of Italian Resistance (Lexington Books, 2023) focuses on the work of a varie...
Michael Braddick, "The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2018)
30 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As historical topics, political revolutions come in and out of fashion. At the moment the American Revolution as an ideological struggle engages the p...
Erika Dyck, "Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2018)
30 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked with historian Erika Dyck about Aldous Huxley, Humphry Osmond and their correspondence over a ten year period. Psychedelic Prophets: Th...
Grammar, Identity, and Ideology in Early 20th-Century Japan
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever felt that the grammar of Asian languages does not fit with the framework that we use to describe them? In the late 19th century, Asian g...
Nature-Study
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It...
Matthieu Felt, "Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan" (Harvard UP, 2023)
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first dedicated study of how the oldest Japanese myths, recor...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 8: The Enemy of Morality Is Not Modernity, It’s Me
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The great English essayist and linguist Samuel Johnson was writing during the Enlightenment – the period some historians identify as the beginning o...
Kristian Petersen, “Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab” (Oxford UP, 2017)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In his monumental new book, Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017), Krist...
Joshua W. Jipp, "The Messianic Theology of the New Testament" (Eerdmans, 2020)
27 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the earliest Christian confessions—that Jesus is Messiah and Lord—has long been recognized throughout the New Testament. Joshua Jipp shows ...
Stuart Elden, “Foucault: The Birth of Power” (Polity Press, 2017)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did Foucault become a public, political intellectual? In Foucault: The Birth of Power (Polity Press, 2017), Stuart Elden, Professor of Political T...
Edward J. Watts, "The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea" (Oxford UP, 2021)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As this book intriguingly explores, for those who would make Rome great again and their victims, ideas of Roman decline and renewal have had a long an...
Timothy McCall, "Making the Renaissance Man: Masculinity in the Courts of Renaissance Italy" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Looking beyond the marble elegance of Michelangelo's David, the pugnacious, passionate, and--crucially--important story of Renaissance manhood. Timo...
Olga V. Solovieva, "The Russian Kurosawa: Transnational Cinema, Or the Art of Speaking Differently" (Oxford UP. 2023)
22 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Olga V. Solovieva's book The Russian Kurosawa: Transnational Cinema, Or the Art of Speaking Differently (Oxford UP. 2023) offers a new historical pe...
Anne E. Linton, "Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
22 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A compelling study of medical and literary imaginations, Anne Linton's Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge Uni...
Ricardo Sousa Silvestre et al., "Vaiṣṇava Concepts of God: Philosophical Perspectives" (Routledge, 2024)
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Vaiṣṇava Concepts of God: Philosophical Perspectives (Routledge, 2024) analyses the concepts of God in Vaiṣṇavism, which is commonly referre...
David M. Freidenreich, "Jewish Muslims: How Christians Imagined Islam as the Enemy" (U California Press, 2023)
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Uncovering the hidden history of Islamophobia and its surprising connections to the long-standing hatred of Jews. Hatred of Jews and hatred of Muslims...
Tyler Dalton McNabb and Erik Baldwin, "Classical Theism and Buddhism: Connecting Metaphysical and Ethical Systems" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
20 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In addition to denying the existence of a substantial, enduring self, Buddhists are usually understood to deny the existence of a God or gods. However...
Katlyn Marie Carter, "Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions" (Yale UP, 2023)
19 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Katlyn Marie Carter, Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions (Yale UP, 2023) examines how debates over secrecy an...
Jackson Lears, "Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street" (FSG, 2023)
17 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview the distinguished historian Jackson Lears talks about his latest book, Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp M...
Gary Saul Morson, "Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter" (Harvard UP, 2023)
17 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since the age of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, Russian literature has posed questions about good and evil, moral responsibility, and human freedom...
Peter Brown, "Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History" (Princeton UP, 2023)
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past seven decades, Peter Brown has transformed our collective understanding of the late Roman Empire and the European Middle Ages alike, est...
Pankaj Jain, "Modern Jainism: A Historical Approach" (Springer, 2023)
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Pankaj Jain's book Modern Jainism: A Historical Approach (Springer, 2023) presents a substantive yet accessible introduction to the modern thought o...
Tristan G. Brown, "Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China" (Princeton UP, 2023)
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to another episode of New Books in Chinese Studies. I am your host, Julia Keblinska, and I am speaking today to Prof. Tristan Brown about his ...
Paul Crosthwaite et al., "Invested: How Three Centuries of Stock Market Advice Reshaped Our Money, Markets, and Minds" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Who hasn’t wished for a surefire formula for riches and a ticket to the good life? For three centuries, investment advisers of all kinds, legit and ...
Stephen Legg, "Round Table Conference Geographies: Constituting Colonial India in Interwar London" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen Legg's Round Table Conference Geographies: Constituting Colonial India in Interwar London (Cambridge UP, 2022) explores a major internationa...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 6: A Medieval Anti-Racist
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What if racism shared an origin with opposition to racism? What if the condemnation of injustice gave rise both to an early form of anti-racism and to...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 5: Picturing Race in Colonial Mexico
09 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Race is sometimes treated as a biological fact. It is actually a modern invention. But for this concept to gain power, its logic had to be spread – ...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 2: What Is Modernity?
06 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of modernity as a distinct time period in history – one that is said to start at different places, but which always includes us. Yet ...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 1: Climbing the Mountains of Modernity
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We all know many stories about how modernity came about. But what does it mean to be “modern”? This episode comes at the question through the test...
David McMahan on Rethinking Meditation
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If anything, the Imperfect Buddha Podcast has been a rallying cry for the disruption of the myths that abound in the world of Buddhism and meditation....
Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, "How the News Feels: The Empathic Power of Literary Journalists" (U Massachusetts Press, 2023)
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In How the News Feels: The Empathic Power of Literary Journalists (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023), Jonathan D. Fitzgerald examines a mode ...
Barbara D. Savage, "Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar" (Yale UP, 2023)
03 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Born in rural Michigan during the Jim Crow era, the bold and irrepressible Merze Tate (1905–1996) refused to limit her intellectual ambitions, despi...
J. Christopher Edwards, "Crucified: The Christian Invention of the Jewish Executioners of Jesus" (Fortress Press, 2023)
02 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In his book Crucified: The Christian Invention of the Jewish Executioners of Jesus (Fortress Press, 2023), J. Christopher Edwards explores the early...
Daniel Jütte, "Transparency: The Material History of an Idea" (Yale UP, 2023)
01 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Transparency is a mantra of our day. It is key to the Western understanding of a liberal society. We expect transparency from, for instance, political...
Christian B. Miller, "Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue" (Oxford UP, 2021)
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Honesty is an important virtue. Parents want to develop it in their children. Close relationships depend upon it. Employers value it in their employee...
Poppy Corbett et al., "Creative Histories of Witchcraft: France, 1790–1940" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How can researchers study magic without destroying its mystery? Drawing on a collaborative project between the playwright Dr. Poppy Corbett, the poet ...
Jürgen Zimmerer, "Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness" (Reclam Verlag, 2023)
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Erinnerungskämpfe: Neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2023) is a new, provocative volume on German memory cultures and poli...
Charles S. Maier, "The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries" (Harvard UP, 2023)
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clea...
Shuchen Xiang, "Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2023)
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastr...
Tony Spawforth, "What the Greeks Did for Us" (Yale UP, 2023)
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like “pandemic,” a Freudian state of mind like the “Oedipus complex,” or a repl...
Ran Zwigenberg, "Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
27 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ran Zwigenberg’s Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (U Chicago Press, 2023) explores early ...
Roslyn Weiss, "Hasdai Crescas: Collected Writings" (Library of the Jewish People, 2023)
27 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Roslyn Weiss, editor of Hasdai Crescas: Collected Writings (Library of the Jewish People, 2023). Hasdai Crescas spent his life in ...
Jeremy Black, "A Brief History of History" (Indiana UP, 2023)
25 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In A Brief History of History (Indiana UP, 2023), acclaimed historian Jeremy Black seeks to reinvigorate and redefine our ideas about history. The s...
Jennifer Maclure, "The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction" (Ohio State UP, 2023)
25 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2023), Jennifer MacLure explores how Victorian novels depict th...
Nader Kadhem, "Africanism: Blacks in the Medieval Arab Imaginary" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
25 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Anti-blackness has until recently been a taboo topic within Arab society. This began to change when Nader Kadhem, a prominent Arab and Muslim thinker ...
Ian Smith, "Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
24 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Ian Smith urges readers of Othello, The Merchant of Venice, ...
The Idea of "Central Europe" from Naumann to Kundera
24 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms: A New Hi...
Greg Bailey, "The Brahmavaivarta Purana (Ganesa Khanda): Ancient Indian Tradition and Mythology" (Motilal Banarsidass, 2022)
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Greg Bailey discusses his new translation of the Gaṇeśa Khaṇḍa of the Brahmavaivarta Purāṇa, one of the few texts dedicated solely to the ...
Biko Mandela Gray and Ryan J. Johnson, "Phenomenology of Black Spirit" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Phenomenology of Black Spirit (Edinburgh UP, 2023), Ryan Johnson and Biko Mandela Gray study the relationship between Hegel's Phenomenology of ...
Chris Cutrone, "The Death of the Millennial Left: Interventions: 2006-2022" (Sublation Media, 2023)
19 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Death of the Millennial Left: Interventions: 2006-2022 (Sublation Media, 2023), Chris Cutrone investigates how and why the Millennial Left d...
Robert P. George's 'Making Men Moral': A 30th Anniversary Conference
18 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The first book in the storied career of one of the most influential conservative legal scholars and philosophers of our day is the focus of an upcomin...
Christopher Lazarski, "Lord Acton for Our Time" (Northern Illinois UP, 2023)
18 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Extracting lessons for our current age, Christopher Lazarski focuses on liberty--how Acton understood it, what he thought was its foundation and neces...
Plantationocene
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Neil Safier talks with us about the Plantationocene, a geological epoch that traces the effects of climate change to t...
Charisse Burden-Stelly, "Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early twentieth century, two panics emerged in the United States. The Black Scare was rooted in white Americans’ fear of Black Nationalism an...
Keith Cantú, "Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami And Śivarājayoga" (Oxford UP, 2023)
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Keith Cantú's Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami And Śivarājayoga (Oxford UP, 2023) examines the life of a nineteenth- to early ...
Mira Balberg, "Fractured Tablets: Forgetfulness and Fallibility in Late Ancient Rabbinic Culture" (U California Press, 2023)
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Rabbinic Sages of the Tannaitic era were fixated on memory and terrified of forgetfulness. In promulgating their own interpretations of Jewish law...
Martin Jay, "Immanent Critiques: The Frankfurt School under Pressure" (Verso, 2023)
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Frankfurt School’s own legacy is best preserved by exercising an immanent critique of its premises and the conclusions to which they often led. ...
Jonathan Greenaway, "Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When one thinks of your typical horror movie and it’s usual imagery, a number of tropes may come forward. Graveyards behind old cathedrals, crucifix...
Beatriz Nascimento, "The Dialectic Is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento" (Princeton UP, 2023)
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Beatriz Nascimento (1942-1995) was a poet, historian, artist, and political leader in Brazil's Black movement, an innovative and creative thinker whos...
Jennifer Burns on the Life and Lasting Influence of Milton Friedman
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Burns (Hoover Reserch Fellow and Stanford Associate Professor of History) joins the podcast to discuss her career as well as her new biograph...
Dalia Kandiyoti, "The Converso's Return: Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture" (Stanford UP, 2020)
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Five centuries after the forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Catholicism, stories of these conversos' descendants uncovering long-hidd...