New Books in Intellectual History
Episodes
Muḥsin Jāsim Mūsawī, "The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures: Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The stories in the Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights, are familiar to many of us: from the tales of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba ...
Jared Secord, "Christian Intellectuals and the Roman Empire: From Justin Martyr to Origen" (Penn State UP, 2020)
09 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Early in the third century, a small group of Greek Christians began to gain prominence and legitimacy as intellectuals in the Roman Empire. Examining ...
L. M. Ratnapalan, "Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
09 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How does Robert Louis Stevenson’s engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global C...
Vincent W. Lloyd, "Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination" (Yale UP, 2022)
09 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This radical work by one of the leading young scholars of Black thought delineates a new concept of Black dignity, yet one with a long history in Blac...
Situating Religion and Medicine (with Michael Stanley-Baker)
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I sit down for an in-depth conversation with my good friend, Michael Stanley-Baker, a scholar of Chinese religion and medicine. We talk about Mi...
Oliver Crisp and Daniel J. Hill, eds., "Reason in the Service of Faith: Collected Essays of Paul Helm" (Routledge, 2023)
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Helm is a distinguished philosopher, with particular interests in the philosophy of religion. His work covers some of the most important aspects ...
Michael S. Roth, "The Student: A Short History" (Yale UP, 2023)
07 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Student: A Short History (Yale UP, 2023), Michael S. Roth narrates a vivid and dynamic history of students, exploring some of the principal m...
Matthew W. Knotts, "On Creation, Science, Disenchantment and the Contours of Being and Knowing" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For Augustine, the world is replete with meaning; it represents not merely a collection of facts to be catalogued but a repository of truths to be dis...
The Philosophy of Music and the Attunement of the Soul
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we speak with Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness core faculty, Jack Bagby about his engagement with the philosophy of music, from...
Endre Sashalmi, "Russian Notions of Power and State in a European Perspective, 1462-1725: Assessing the Significance of Peter's Reign" (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Endre Sashalmi's book Russian Notions of Power and State in a European Perspective, 1462-1725: Assessing the Significance of Peter's Reign (Academic...
Sarah Clegg, "Women's Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi" (Apollo, 2023)
02 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Creatures like Lilith, the seductive first wife of Adam, and mermaids, who lured sailors to their death, are familiar figures in the genre of monstrou...
Marion Holmes Katz, "Wives and Work: Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity" (Columbia UP, 2022)
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, I speak with Marion Holmes Katz about her latest book Wives and Work: Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity (Columbia UP, 2022)...
Hans Van Eyghen, "The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs" (Routledge, 2023)
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hans Van Eyghen's book The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs (Routledge, 2023) assesses whether belief in spirits is epistemically justified. It presen...
Joshua Daniel Schachterle, "John Cassian and the Creation of Monastic Subjectivity" (Equinox Publishing, 2022)
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In John Cassian and the Creation of Monastic Subjectivity (Equinox Books, 2023), a revision of his 2019 dissertation, Joshua Schachterle evaluates t...
H. Norman Strickman, "The Secret of the Torah: A Translation of Abraham Ibn Ezra's Sefer Yesod Mora" (Kodesh Press, 2021)
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra is one of the most important Jewish personalities of all time. Aside from being a Bible commentator of great consequence, his w...
Sara Protasi, "The Philosophy of Envy" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Envy is almost universally condemned and feared. But is its bad reputation always warranted? In The Philosophy of Envy (Cambridge UP, 2022), Sara Pr...
How Should Protestants Engage With Natural Law Theory?
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Natural law theory is known to be more emphasized among Catholics than Protestants. Why is that the case, and should it be? Do Protestants need to foc...
Barbara Sattler, "The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought: Foundations in Logic, Method, and Mathematics" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Barbara M. Sattler's book The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought: Foundations in Logic, Method, and Mathematics (Cambridge UP, 2020) examin...
The Ideology of Entrepreneurship: A Conversation with Robert Eberhart
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Eberhart, Associate Professor of Management and Faculty Director of International Business at the University of San Diego, talks about his work...
Hollis Robbins, "Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition" (U Georgia Press, 2020)
26 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As I learned from Hollis Robbins’s monograph Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition (U Georgia Press, 2020), th...
Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst, "I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America" (UNC Press, 2023)
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Carl Ernst’s and Mbaye Lo’s new book I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America (UNC Press, 2023) is a fascin...
Lawrence Goldman, "Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2022)
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth ...
Smita A. Rahman et al., "Globalizing Political Theory" (Routledge, 2022)
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Three political theorists, Smita A. Rahman (DePauw University), Katherine A. Gordy (San Francisco State University), and Shirin S. Deylami (Western Wa...
Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates, "Noah's Arkive" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Travis Holloway, "How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art, and Politics for the Anthropocene" (Stanford UP, 2022)
23 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
the near universal disappearance of shared social enterprise: the ruling class builds walls and lunar shuttles, while the rest of us contend with the ...
Thomas Simpson, "The Frontier in British India: Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Frontier in British India: Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2021), Thomas Simpson provides an innovative a...
Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode from the Institute’s Vault we hear from Rebecca Goldstein, an American philosopher, novelist, and public intellectual. She holds a P...
Laura R. Kremmel, "Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination: Morbid Anatomies" (U Wales Press, 2022)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination: Morbid Anatomies (U Wales Press, 2022) demonstrates a little-studied crossover between the Gothic imagi...
Peter Moore, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream (1740–1776)" ( FSG, 2023)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The most famous phrase in American history once looked quite different. "The preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness" was how Thom...
Samuel Moyn, "Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times" (Yale UP, 2023)
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
By the middle of the twentieth century, many liberals looked glumly at the world modernity had brought about, with its devastating wars, rising totali...
Morgan J. Robinson, "A Language for the World: The Standardization of Swahili" (Ohio UP, 2022)
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Morgan J. Robinson argues that the portability of Standard Swahili has contributed to its wide use not only across the African continent but also arou...
Mary Edwards, "Sartre’s Existential Psychoanalysis: Knowing Others" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it is hard to think of him without imagining him in very particular contexts. One will likely ima...
The Future of Traditionalism: A Discussion with Mark J. Sedgwick
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Twenty years ago, it seemed Traditionalism was an esoteric and irrelevant set of beliefs. Since then, powerful people sympathetic to its ideas have ov...
Jason Weiner, "Care and Covenant: A Jewish Bioethic of Responsibility" (Georgetown UP, 2023)
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Jewish tradition has important perspectives, history and wisdom that can contribute significantly to crucial contemporary healthcare deliberations...
Al Coppola, "The Theater of Experiment: Staging Natural Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2016)
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The first book-length study of the relationship between science and theater during the long eighteenth century in Britain, The Theater of Experiment:...
Yehuda Halper, "Jewish Socratic Questions in an Age Without Plato: Permitting and Forbidding Open-Inquiry in 12-15th Century Europe and North Africa" (Brill, 2021)
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Jewish Socratic Questions in an Age Without Plato: Permitting and Forbidding Open-Inquiry in 12-15th Century Europe and North Africa (Brill, 2021...
Jeremy Black, "Smollett's Britain" (St. Augustine's Press, 2022)
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Smollett's Britain (St. Augustine's Press, 2022), acclaimed British historian Jeremy Black examines the layers of craft and insight in Tobias Sm...
Robert T. Tally, Jr., "For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism" (Zero Books, 2022)
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Robert T. Tally, Jr.'s book For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism (Zero Books, 2022) takes as its p...
Simon Mills, "A Commerce of Knowledge: Trade, Religion, and Scholarship Between England and the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1760" (Oxford UP, 2020)
13 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Simon Mills' book A Commerce of Knowledge: Trade, Religion, and Scholarship Between England and the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1760 (Oxford UP, 2020) tell...
Shana Rosenblatt Mauer, "Mordecai Richler's Imperfect Search for Moral Values" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
12 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From his debut as a novelist, Mordecai Richler challenged, provoked, enraged, entertained, and surprised readers. Criticizing him for his portrayals o...
Ashley Robertson Preston, "Mary Mcleod Bethune the Pan-Africanist" (UP of Florida, 2023)
12 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This book examines the Pan-Africanism of Mary McLeod Bethune through her work, which internationalized the scope of Black women's organizations to cre...
Michael Ruse, "Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us about Evolution" (Oxford UP, 2017)
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Darwinian Revolution--the change in thinking sparked by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which argued that all organisms including human...
Jon Stewart, "A History of Nihilism in the Nineteenth Century: Confrontations with Nothingness" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nihilism - the belief that life is meaningless - is frequently associated with twentieth-century movements such as existentialism, postmodernism and D...
Stanley E. Porter and Alan E. Kurschner eds., "The Future Restoration of Israel: A Response to Supersessionism" (Pickwick, 2023)
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Future Restoration of Israel: A Response to Supersessionism (Pickwick, 2023)., a wide range of scholars write on the question of the promis...
Yoni Furas, "Educating Palestine: Teaching and Learning History Under the Mandate" (Oxford UP, 2020)
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Through the story of education and the teaching of history in Mandate Palestine, Yoni Furas reframes our understanding of the Palestinian and Zionist ...
Mike Rothschild, "Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories" (Melville House, 2023)
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories (Melville House, 2023), Mike Rothschild delves into the history of the ...
Daniel G Hummel, "The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation" (William B. Eerdmans, 2023)
05 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation (William B. Eerdmans, 2023), Daniel G. Humm...
Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey, "Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America" (UNC Press, 2023)
04 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Twentieth-century African American history cannot be told without accounting for the significant influence of Pan-African thought, just as the story o...
What Was Contemporary Art?
03 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary art in the early twenty-first century is often discussed as if the very idea of art that is contemporary is new. Yet all works of art wer...
Ruth Yun-Ju Chen, "Good Formulas: Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts" (U Washington Press, 2023)
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ruth Yun-Ju Chen is a historian of mid-imperial China (600–1400). Her research interests lie in the histories of medicine, publishing, and material ...
D. J. Taylor, "Orwell: The New Life" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A fascinating exploration of George Orwell--and his body of work--by an award-winning Orwellian biographer and scholar, presenting the author anew to ...
Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, "Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2021)
30 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Anchored in the principles of free-market economics, neoliberalism emerged in the 1990s as the world's most dominant economic paradigm. It has been as...
Zhihua Yao, "Nonexistent Objects in Buddhist Philosophy: On Knowing What There is Not" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
30 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Can we know what there is not? Zhihua Yao's Nonexistent Objects in Buddhist Philosophy: On Knowing What There is Not (Bloomsbury, 2020) examines t...
Adom Getachew and Jennifer Pitts eds. "W. E. B. Du Bois: International Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
30 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the most significant American political thinkers of the twentieth century. This volume collects 24 of his essays and speec...
Jonathan R. Topham, "Reading the Book of Nature: How Eight Best Sellers Reconnected Christianity and the Sciences on the Eve of the Victorian Age" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Charles Darwin returned to Britain from the Beagle voyage in 1836, the most talked-about scientific books of the day were the Bridgewater Treatis...
Marzia Milazzo, "Colorblind Tools: Global Technologies of Racial Power" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Colorblind Tools: Global Technologies of Racial Power (Northwestern UP, 2022), Marzia Milazzo offers a transnational account of anti-Blackness an...
Archaeology and Nomadism in the Russian Empire: An interview with Ismael Biyashev
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the second half of the 19th century, both professional and amateur archaeologists, surveyors, and explorers of the “periphery” of the Russian ...
The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke
28 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In April 2014, David Bromwich spoke at the Institute about his forthcoming book, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautifu...
Richard N. Langlois, "The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise" (Princeton UP, 2023)
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The twentieth century was the managerial century in the United States. An organizational transformation, from entrepreneurial to managerial capitalism...
Melissa Shew and Kimberly Garchar, "Philosophy for Girls: An Invitation to the Life of Thought" (Oxford UP, 2020)
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Melissa Shew and Kimberly Garchar's book Philosophy for Girls: An Invitation to the Life of Thought (Oxford UP, 2020) empowers its readers by explor...
Ismay Milford, "African Activists in a Decolonising World: The Making of an Anticolonial Culture, 1952-1966" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As wars of liberation in Africa and Asia shook the post-war world, a cohort of activists from East and Central Africa, specifically the region encompa...
50 Years after Martin Jay's "The Dialectical Imagination"
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After 50 years of the publication of The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950, ...
Yamin Levy, "The Mysticism of Andalusia: Exploring HaRambam's Mystical Tradition" (MHC Press, 2023)
23 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Yamin Levy's The Mysticism of Andalusia: Exploring HaRambam's Mystical Tradition (MHC Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking book that delves into the mys...
Toril Moi, "Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
22 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Toril Moi, whose book Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin and Cavell (University of Chicago P...
"Companionable Thinking: Spenser With..." Spencer Studies, Volume 37 (2023)
21 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Volume 37 of Spenser Studies is a special issue on the theme of “Companionable Thinking: Spenser With.” As guest editors of this collection of e...
Paul Hanebrink, "In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890–1944" (Cornell UP, 2018)
21 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this important historical account of the role that religion played in defining the political life of a modern national society, Paul A. Hanebrink s...