New Books in Western European Studies
Episodes
Charlie Samuelson, "Courtly and Queer: Deconstruction, Desire, and Medieval French Literature" (Ohio State UP, 2022)
03 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Courtly and Queer: Deconstruction, Desire, and Medieval French Literature (Ohio State UP, 2022), Charlie Samuelson casts queerness in medieval Fr...
Marilyn Migiel, "Veronica Franco in Dialogue" (U Toronto Press, 2022)
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since the late twentieth century, the Venetian courtesan Veronica Franco has been viewed as a triumphant proto-feminist icon: a woman who celebrated h...
Kenneth R. Stow, "Anna and Tranquillo: Catholic Anxiety and Jewish Protest in the Age of Revolutions" (Yale UP, 2016)
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Kenneth R. Stow about his book Anna and Tranquillo: Catholic Anxiety and Jewish Protest in the Age of Revolutions (Yale UP, 2016)...
Thomas Kuehn, "Patrimony and Law in Renaissance Italy" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Kuehn, Professor Emeritus at Clemson University talks about his new book, Patrimony and Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge University Press,...
Caroline Dodds Pennock, "On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe" (Knopf, 2023)
26 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe (Knopf, 2023) by Dr. Caroline Dodds Pennock presents a landmark work of narrative histor...
Bernard D. Geoghegan, "Code: From Information Theory to French Theory" (Duke UP, 2023)
25 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan traces the shared intellectual and political history of computer scientists, cyberneticists, anthropologists, linguists, a...
The Future of Democratic Capitalism: A Discussion with Martin Wolf
24 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Does China show that capitalism works better without democracy? What can be done to secure the future of open societies in which there is wealth, tole...
Joseph T. Stuart, "Christopher Dawson: A Cultural Mind in the Age of the Great War" (Catholic U of America Press, 2022)
24 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) was a British historian who was deeply shaken by the Great War (1914-1918) and sought to explore the history of differe...
Peter Hayes, "Why? Explaining the Holocaust" (Norton, 2017)
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Hayes's book Why? Explaining the Holocaust (Norton, 2017) explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the ...
Helena Hof, "The EU Migrant Generation in Asia: Middle-Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities" (Policy Press, 2022)
22 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing on an extensive study with young individuals who migrated to Singapore and Tokyo in the 2010s, The EU Migrant Generation in Asia: Middle-Clas...
Tara Zahra, "Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars" (Norton, 2023)
22 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on ...
Leila Jancovich and David Stevenson, "Failures in Cultural Participation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the past two decades, the arts and cultural establishment in the UK has been trying to engage a broader set of audiences in their work. Countless ...
Alan Meades, "Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade" (MIT Press, 2022)
18 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the British amusement arcade from the 1800s to the present. Amusement arcades are an important part of British culture, yet discussions...
The Future of the Liberal Order: A Discussion with James E. Cronin
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Has the liberal order been taken for granted? The post war consensus and the impact of the cold war may have helped establish a way of doing politics ...
Mary C. Flannery, "Practicing Shame: Female Honour in Later Medieval England" (Manchester UP, 2019)
15 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Practicing shame investigates how the literature of medieval England encouraged women to safeguard their honour by cultivating hypervigilance against ...
Spencer Jones, "The Darkest Year: The British Army on the Western Front 1917" (Helion and Company, 2021)
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Darkest Year: The British Army on the Western Front 1917 (Helion and Company, 2021), leading First World War historians examine key aspects o...
Jorge Marco and Gutmaro Gomez Bravo, "The Fabric of Fear: Building Franco's New Society in Spain, 1936-1950" (Liverpool UP, 2023)
12 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jorge Marco and Gutmaro Gomez Bravo's book The Fabric of Fear: Building Franco's New Society in Spain, 1936-1950 (Liverpool UP, 2023) deals compr...
Jonathan Ervine, "Humour in Contemporary France: Controversy, Consensus and Contradictions" (Liverpool UP, 2019)
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thinking through serious questions about racial, ethnic, and religious difference, Jonathan Ervine’s Humour in Contemporary France: Controversy, ...
John Goodlad, "The Salt Roads: How Fish Made a Culture" (Birlinn, 2022)
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Salt Roads: How Fish Made a Culture (Birlinn, 2022) by John Goodlad is the extraordinary story of how salt fish from Shetland became one of the s...
Jane Hwang Degenhardt, "Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage" (Oxford UP, 2022)
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How were understandings of chance, luck, and fortune affected by early capitalist developments such as the global expansion of English trade and colon...
Mary E. Sommar, "The Slaves of the Churches: A History" (Oxford UP, 2020)
09 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, stories of religious universities and institutions grappling with their slave-owning past have made headlines in the news. People fin...
Francis M. Carroll, "America and the Making of an Independent Ireland: A History" (NYU Press, 2021)
08 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Easter Day 1916, more than a thousand Irishmen stormed Dublin city center, seizing the General Post Office building and reading the Proclamation fo...
Robert J. Dostal, "Gadamer's Hermeneutics: Between Phenomenology and Dialectic" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
07 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: Between Phenomenology and Dialectic (Northwestern University Press, 2022), Robert J. Dostal provides a comprehensive an...
Where is the Left? The Rise and Decline of Social Democratic Movements
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week on International Horizons, David Abraham from the University of Miami discusses the origins of social democratic parties in Europe and the p...
Alan Verskin, "Diary of a Black Jewish Messiah: The Sixteenth-Century Journey of David Reubeni Through Africa, the Middle East, and Europe" (Stanford UP, 2023)
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1524, a man named David Reubeni appeared in Venice, claiming to be the ambassador of a powerful Jewish kingdom deep in the heart of Arabia. In this...
Rowan Dorin, "No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe" (Princeton UP, 2023)
05 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the twelfth century, Jewish moneylenders increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of European authorities, who denounced the evils...
Susan Stewart, "The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How have ruins become so valued in Western culture and so central to our art and literature? Covering a vast chronological and geographical range, fro...
Matthew Taylor, "Sport and the Home Front: Wartime Britain at Play, 1939-45" (Routledge, 2020)
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Matthew Taylor, Professor of History at De Montfort University, and author of Sport and the Home Front: Wartime Britain at Pla...
Richard Overy, "Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945" (Viking, 2022)
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 (Viking, 2022) to recast the way in which we view the Second World War a...
Michah Gottlieb, "The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and Middle-Class German Judaism As Spiritual Enterprise" (Oxford UP, 2021)
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and Middle-Class German Judaism as Spiritual Enterprise (Oxford University Press, 2021) was the 2022 winner...
Catherine Ashton, "And Then What?: Stories from Twenty-First-Century Diplomacy" (Elliott & Thompson, 2023)
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When she was chosen as the EU's first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP) in 2009, Catherine Ashton admits she "felt n...
Catherine Ashton, "And Then What?: Stories from Twenty-First-Century Diplomacy" (Elliott & Thompson, 2023)
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When she was chosen as the EU's first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP) in 2009, Catherine Ashton admits she "felt n...
Curtis Runstedler, "Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Curtis Runstedler's book Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) explores the different functions and ...
The 10,000 Year Build-Up to Brexit: A Conversation with Ian Morris
01 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did Britain become a global superpower? Historian and classicist Ian Morris thinks geography has a lot to do with it. Prof. Morris discusses his l...
War, Plague, and Confession in Fourteenth-Century Provence
31 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nicole Archambeau, associate professor of history at Colorado State University, talks about her book, Souls under Siege: Stories of War, Plague, and C...
Book Talk 57: Anne Fernald and Rajgopal Saikumar on Virginia Woolf's "Three Guineas" (1938)
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Virginia Woolf’s 1938 provocative and polemical essay Three Guineas presents the iconic writer’s views on war, women, and the way the patriarchy...
Angela Vanhaelen, "The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Automata, Waxworks, Fountains, Labyrinths" (Penn State UP, 2022)
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Angela Vanhaelen's The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Automata, Waxworks, Fountains, Labyrinths (Penn State University Press, 202...
Corey Lee Wrenn, "Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony" (SUNY Press, 2021)
28 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Irish vegan studies are poised for increasing relevance as climate change threatens the legitimacy and longevity of animal agriculture and widespread ...
Francesca Sobande and layla-roxanne hill. "Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
27 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be Black in Scotland today? How are notions of nationhood, Scottishness, and Britishness implicated in this? Why is it important ...
Susannah Heschel, "The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany" (Princeton UP, 2010)
27 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton UP, 2010) documents the process, and relative ease, with which instit...
Igor H. De Souza, "Rewriting Maimonides: Early Commentaries on the Guide of the Perplexed" (de Gruyter, 2018)
27 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Maimonideanism, the intellectual culture inspired by Maimonides’ writings, has received much recent attention. Yet a central aspect of Maimonideanis...
Uther Charlton-Stevens, "Anglo-India and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It can be easy to think of colonies as having two populations: colonial subjects, and colonial overlords from Europe. It’s an easy narrative: one ha...
Podcast Series: Hell on Earth--The 30 Years War and the Violent Birth of Capitalism
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hell on Earth: The 30 Years War and the Violent Birth of Capitalism is a new 10-part series from the creators of Hell of Presidents — one of Ent...
James Morton, "Byzantine Religious Law in Medieval Italy" (Oxford UP, 2021)
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Southern Italy was conquered by the Norman Hauteville dynasty in the late eleventh century after over five hundred years of continuous Byzantine rule....
The Future of the European Left
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why is it so hard for left wing parties in the West to win elections? Some such as the UK Labour Party have headed to the centre. The history of Labou...
Marion Turner, "The Wife of Bath: A Biography" (Princeton UP, 2023)
17 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English ...
James M. Deem, "The Prisoners of Breendonk: Personal Histories from a World War II Concentration Camp" (Mariner Books, 2020)
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Fort Breendonk was built in the early 1900s to protect Antwerp, Belgium, from possible German invasion. Damaged at the start of World War I, it fell i...
Stuart Carroll, "Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Stuart Carroll's Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2023) transforms our understanding of Europe between 1500 ...
On Émile Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life" (1912)
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Steven Lukes about Émile Durkheim's classic The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). Lukes is the author of Emile Durkhei...
Richard Davenport-Hines, "Conservative Thinkers from All Souls College Oxford" (Boydell & Brewer, 2022)
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
All Souls College Oxford was one of the meeting points of English public intellectuals in the twentieth century. Its Fellows prided themselves on agre...
Holy Paradox and St. Teresa of Ávila: Mysticism in Sixteenth Century Spain
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Carlos Eire, author of The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila: A Biography (2019) and professor of medieval and early modern European history and religion...
Richard Wolin, "Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology" (Yale UP, 2023)
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century's most important ph...
Ciara Breathnach, "Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class: Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902" (Oxford UP, 2022)
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ciara Breathnach's book Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class: Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902 (Oxford UP, 2022) focuses on the evolution o...
Rousseau's Ideas About Censorship in the Arts
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1982, the Institute held a multi day discussion of censorship. In this session from the Vault, sociologist Richard Sennett talks about Jean Jacques...
Robin Vose, "The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle Over Word and Image for the Greater Glory of God" (Reaktion, 2022)
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Robin Vose (St. Thomas University) talks about his new monograph, The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle over Word and Image for t...
Urvashi Chakravarty, "Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022), Urvashi Chakravarty excavates th...
Siv B. Lie, "Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France (U Chicago Press, 2021) shows how relationships between racial identi...
Dannelle Gutarra Cordero, "She Is Weeping: An Intellectual History of Racialized Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dannelle Gutarra Cordero's expansive study incorporates writers, cultural figures and intellectuals from antiquity to the present day to analyze how d...
Paul Nelles and Rosa Salzberg, "Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement" (Amsterdam UP, 2022)
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Nelles (Carleton University) and Rosa Salzberg (University of Trento) talk about early modern culture, travel and the joys of editing their new v...
Rebecca Binns, "Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avant-Garde" (Manchester UP, 2022)
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Binn's Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avante Garde (Manchester University Press, 2022) is the first book-length work dedicated ...
Julia Elsky, "Writing Occupation: Jewish Émigré Voices in Wartime France" (Stanford UP, 2020)
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Among the Jewish writers who emigrated from Eastern Europe to France in the 1910s and 1920s, a number chose to switch from writing in their languages ...
Eren Duzgun, "Capitalism, Jacobinism and International Relations: Revisiting Turkish Modernity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Western interpretations of the Ottoman age of reform and the Turkish Republic often evaluate these histories against an idealized, essentialized narra...
Hélène Jawhara Piñer, "Jews, Food, and Spain: The Oldest Medieval Spanish Cookbook and the Sephardic Culinary Heritage" (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
27 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Jews, Food, and Spain: The Oldest Medieval Spanish Cookbook and the Sephardic Culinary Heritage (Academic Studies Press, 2022), Hélène Jawhara ...
Garritt van Dyk, "Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England and France" (Amsterdam UP, 2022)
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Garritt van Dyk talks about national identity, food, and cooking in this conversation about Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century Engla...
Tzafrir Barzilay, "Poisoned Wells: Accusations, Persecution, and Minorities in Medieval Europe, 1321-1422" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
24 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Poisoned Wells: Accusations, Persecution, and Minorities in Medieval Europe, 1321-1422 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), Tzafrir Barzilay...
Justin Dolan Stover, "Enduring Ruin: Environmental Destruction During the Irish" (U College Dublin Press, 2022)
24 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Justin Dolan Stover is Associate Professor of transnational European history at Idaho State University, where he teaches courses on war and violence, ...
Stephen Dobranski, "Reading John Milton: How to Persist in Troubled Times" (Stanford UP, 2022)
24 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
John Milton is unrivalled--for the music of his verse and the breadth of his learning. In this brisk, topical, and engaging biography, Stephen B. Dobr...
Michael Sturza, "The London Revolution 1640-1643: Class Struggles in 17th Century England" (The Mad Duck Coalition, 2022)
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The London Revolution 1640-1643: Class Struggles in 17th Century England examines the political upheavals that occurred during the reign of Charles t...
The Future of Global Trade: A Discussion with Shannon K. O'Neil
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Critics of globalisation come in many forms from environmentalists to trade unionists and many others in between. In the midst of all the controversy ...
Sam Slote et al., "Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses" (Oxford UP, 2022)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
James Joyce's Ulysses is filled with all sorts of references that can get in the way of many of its readers. Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses ...
Noémie Ndiaye, "Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022) shows how the early modern mass media of ...
On Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time"
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Martin Heidegger did not like small thoughts. He was fascinated by the most expansive questions humans can ask themselves. Questions like: Why are we ...
Jane Freeland, "Feminist Transformations and Domestic Violence Activism in Divided Berlin, 1968-2002" (Oxford UP, 2022)
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Feminist Transformations and Domestic Violence Activism in Divided Berlin, 1968-2002 (Oxford University Press, 2022), Jane Freeland traces the de...
On Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Paris in 1953, one of the strangest and most popular plays of the 20th century premiered, Waiting for Godot, written by the Irish writer Samuel Bec...
Pamela H. Smith, "From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How and why early modern European artisans began to record their knowledge. In From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Kn...
Clara E. Mattei, "The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A groundbreaking examination of austerity’s dark intellectual origins. For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to...
On William Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern charact...
Carl Griffin, "The Politics of Hunger: Protest, Poverty and Policy in England, 1750-1840" (Manchester UP, 2020)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were supposedly the period in which the threat of famine lifted for the peoples of England. But hunger r...
Efram Sera-Shriar, "Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022) examines Briti...
Quentin Bruneau, "States and the Masters of Capital: Sovereign Lending, Old and New" (Columbia UP, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today, states' ability to borrow private capital depends on stringent evaluations of their creditworthiness. While many presume that this has long bee...
Hester Barron, "The Social World of the School: Education and Community in Interwar London" (Manchester UP, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Social World of the School: Education and Community in Interwar London (Manchester UP, 2022) shows why the study of schooling matters to the his...
On Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote"
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Don Quixote was written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. He wrote it in two parts. Part one was published in 1605, and part two ten years later,...
Rebecca Ingram, "Women's Work: How Culinary Cultures Shaped Modern Spain" (Vanderbilt UP, 2022)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sandie Holguín (Professor of History and Coeditor of the Journal of Women’s History, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Rebecca Ingram (Associa...
Harvey J. Kaye, "The British Marxist Historians" (Zero Book, 2022)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The British Marxist Historians, originally published in 1995, remains the first and most complete study of the founders of one of the most influentia...
On Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time"
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The French writer Marcel Proust was fascinated by life. But he was even more interested in how we perceive life. In 1908, when he was in his late 30s,...
On Voltaire's "Candide"
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many people made the European Enlightenment, but probably nobody better represents the movement’s spirit than the French writer and philosopher Volt...
Joanne Yao, "The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order" (Manchester UP, 2022)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Environmental politics has traditionally been a peripheral concern for international relations theory, but increasing alarm over global environmental ...
Fintan Walsh, "The Road to Kells: Prehistoric Archaeology of the M3, Navan to Kells and N52, Kells Bypass Road Project" (Wordwell Books, 2022)
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this latest publication in the TII Heritage series, the long prehistory of Kells and its hinterland is shown to be written on the landscape in foun...
On James Joyce's "Ulysses"
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps more than any other book, Ulysses has the reputation of being difficult—it is dense, allusive, and often hard to follow. But Joyce wasn’t ...
Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy (Penn State University Press, 2021) a provocative book, Marla Segol explores the developme...
Leigh T. I. Penman, "The Lost History of Cosmopolitanism: The Early Modern Origins of the Intellectual Ideal" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Lost History of Cosmopolitanism: The Early Modern Origins of the Intellectual Ideal (Bloomsbury, 2020) challenges our most basic assumptions abo...
Jane Stevenson, "Women and Latin in the Early Modern Period" (Brill, 2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jane Stevenson’s newest book, Women and Latin in the Early Modern Period (Brill, 2022), tracks the history and historiography of women Latinists i...
On Hans Blumenberg's "The Legitimacy of the Modern Age"
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Those of us living today generally think of ourselves as modern, that we live in modern times, and that we are very different from the people of the p...
Mary Channen Caldwell, "Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Channen Caldwell in her new book Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song (Cambridge University Press 2022) opens up new avenues for invest...
Sandra Ott, "War, Judgment, And Memory In The Basque Borderlands, 1914-1945" (U Nevada Press, 2008)
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
During the first half of the twentieth century, the French Basque province of Xiberoa was a place of refuge, conflict, and foreign occupation. With th...
Cathy McClive, "The Art of Childbirth: A Seventeenth-Century Midwife's Epistolary Treatise to Doctor Vallant" (Iter Press, 2022)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Cathy McClive (Florida State University) offers the first full-length bilingual edition of an extraordinary treatise on childbirth written by a seve...
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, "Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century" (St. Martin's Press, 2022)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
While the story of women’s liberation has often been framed by the growing acceptance of pants over the twentieth century, the most important and in...
Jasmine Calver, "Anti-Fascism, Gender, and International Communism: The Comité Mondial Des Femmes Contre la Guerre et Le Fascisme, 1934-1941" (Routledge, 2022)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Women played an essential role in the international struggle against fascism during the interwar period, though their work has been neglected in broad...
Cristina Civantos, "Jamón and Halal: Lessons in Tolerance from Rural Andalucía" (Amherst College Press, 2022)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I interview Dr. Christina Civantos (University of Miami, FL, USA) about her open access book Jamón and Halal: Lessons in Tolerance ...
Jeremy Black, "A Brief History of the British Monarchy: From the Iron Age to King Charles III" (Robinson, 2022)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The British monarchy is at a turning point. Concise and engaging, Jeremy Black's A Brief History of the British Monarchy: From the Iron Age to King ...