New Books in Western European Studies
Episodes
Aleksandra Nicole Pfau, "Medieval Communities and the Mad: Narratives of Crime and Mental Illness in Late Medieval France" (Amsterdam UP, 2020)
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of madness as a challenge to communities lies at the core of legal sources. Aleksandra Pfau, Medieval Communities and the Mad: Narratives...
Teresa Michals, "Lame Captains and Left-Handed Admirals: Amputee Officers in Nelson's Navy" (U Virginia Press, 2021)
09 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The well-known Admiral Horatio Nelson fought all of his most historically significant battles after he lost his right arm and the sight in one eye. Wi...
Andrea Muehlebach, "A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe" (Duke UP, 2023)
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe (Duke University Press, 2023)) Andrea Muehlebach examines the work of activists across Europe as ...
Steven Veerapen, "The Wisest Fool: The Life of James VI and I" (Birlinn, 2023)
07 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
James VI and I has long endured a mixed reputation. To many, he is the homosexual King, the inveterate witch-roaster, the smelly sovereign who never w...
Taylor Cowdery, "Matter and Making in Early English Poetry: Literary Production from Chaucer to Sidney" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
06 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is the raw material of literature the paper, ink, vellum, paphyrus, and increasingly electronic data that it is inscribed on? Or is the stuff of liter...
Andrew Hesketh, "Escape to Gwrych Castle: A Jewish Refugee Story" (U of Wales Press, 2023)
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1939, a number of German Jewish refugee children, brought over on the Kindertransport, found themselves in Abergele, North Wales. Their temporary n...
The Future of the NHS: A Discussion with Gavin Francis
03 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The British National Health Service - free for all - used to be the envy of the world. But today the NHS is malfunctioning. More and more people are r...
Kimberly Mair, "The Biopolitics of Care in Second World War Britain" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
03 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
During the crisis of the Second World War in Britain, official Air Raid Precautions made the management of daily life a moral obligation of civil defe...
Peter K. Andersson, "Fool: In Search of Henry VIII's Closest Man" (Princeton UP, 2023)
02 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The first biography of Henry VIII’s court fool William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor age In som...
Anna Kathryn Grau and Lisa Colton, "Female-Voice Song and Women's Musical Agency in the Middle Ages" (Brill, 2022)
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
While there is little doubt that women were active participants in medieval musical culture, their role has nevertheless been variously obfuscated, un...
Aaron Kunin, "Character as Form" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Aaron Kunin, Professor of English at Pomona College. We will discuss two books Aaron published in 2019: the first is Character as ...
Una McIlvenna, "Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900" (Oxford UP, 2022)
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Across Europe, from the dawn of print until the early twentieth century, the news of crime and criminals' public executions was printed in song form o...
Bonnie Gordon, "Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano, and Other Strange Sounds" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Italian courts and churches began employing castrato singers in the late sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century, the singers occupied a celebrit...
Mikkel Dack, "Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany: The Fragebogen Questionnaire and Political Screening During the Allied Occupation" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the Second World War, the victorious Allied armies implemented a radical program to purge Nazism from Germany and preserve peace in Eur...
Wolf Gruner, "Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany" (Yale UP, 2023)
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Wolf Gruner about his new book Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany (Yale UP, 2023). Drawing on tw...
Julian Jackson, "France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain" (Harvard UP, 2023)
27 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There was a time when French people put up picture of Marshal Philippe Petain on their walls. He is a figure of immeasurable stature to the country of...
Jeremy Black, "Why the Industrial Revolution Happened in Britain" (Amberley Publishing, 2023)
26 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Jeremy Black about his new book Why the Industrial Revolution Happened in Britain (Amberley Publishing, 2023). Britain's key impo...
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 ...
Stephanie Barczewski, "How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023)
23 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Stephanie Barczewski is an exploration of the evolution of the quintessentially English ...
Adam Jasienski, "Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and the Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World" (Penn State UP, 2023)
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Penn State University Press, 2023), art historian Adam...
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...
David Broder, "Mussolini's Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy" (Pluto Press, 2023)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The fastest-rising force in Italian politics is Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia - a party with a direct genealogy from Mussolini's regime. Surging ...
Conor Lucey, "House and Home in Georgian Ireland: Spaces and Cultures of Domestic Life" (Four Courts Press, 2022)
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Conor Lucey's book House and Home in Georgian Ireland: Spaces and Cultures of Domestic Life (Four Courts Press, 2022) explores the everyday characte...
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...
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...
Isadore Ryan, "No Way Out: The Irish in Wartime France, 1939–1945" (Mercier Press, 2018)
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The experiences of the Irish in France during the war were overshadowed by the threat of internment or destitution. Up to 2,000 Irish people were stuc...
Diane Purkiss, "English Food: A Social History of England Told Through the Food on Its Tables (William Collins, 2022)
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A rich and indulgent history, English Food: A Social History of England Told Through the Food on Its Tables (William Collins, 2022) by Dr. Diane Pur...
Hans Kundnani, "Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project" (Hurst, 2023)
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"Today’s 'pro-Europeans' would be horrified at the suggestion that their idea of Europe had anything to do with whiteness. In fact, many would find ...
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:...
Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell, "Johnson at 10: The Inside Story" (Atlantic Books, 2023)
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After his dramatic rise to power in the summer of 2019 amid the Brexit deadlock, Boris Johnson presided over the most turbulent period of British hist...
Sara Beam, "Trial of Jeanne Catherine: Infanticide in Early Modern Geneva" (U Toronto Press, 2020)
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1686 in Geneva, a single mother named Jeanne Catherine Thomasset is charged with poisoning two young children: her own illegitimate daughter and th...
Toward a More Expansive View of Medieval Europe: Kyivan Rus and Norman Salerno in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on gender relations, family formation, and marriage patterns in areas peripheral to the England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire, Christia...
Michael Broers, "Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire, 1811-1821" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
12 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1811, Napoleon stood at his zenith. He had defeated all his continental rivals, come to an entente with Russia, and his blockade of Britain seemed,...
Aleksandra Nicole Pfau, "Medieval Communities and the Mad: Narratives of Crime and Mental Illness in Late Medieval France" (Amsterdam UP, 2020)
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of madness as a challenge to communities lies at the core of legal sources. Aleksandra Nicole Pfau's book Medieval Communities and the Ma...
Esra Özyürek, "Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany" (Stanford UP, 2023)
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At the turn of the millennium, Middle Eastern and Muslim Germans had rather unexpectedly become central to the country's Holocaust memory culture—no...
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...
Daniel Foliard, "The Violence of Colonial Photography" (Manchester UP, 2022)
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The late nineteenth century witnessed a rapid increase in colonial conflicts throughout the French and British empires. It was also the period in whic...
Steven Press, "Blood and Diamonds: Germany's Imperial Ambitions in Africa" (Harvard UP, 2021)
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since the late 1990s, activists have campaigned to remove "conflict diamonds" from jewelry shops and department stores. But if the problem of conflict...
Richard C. Hoffmann, "The Catch: An Environmental History of Medieval European Fisheries" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Catch: An Environmental History of Medieval European Fisheries (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a comprehensive examination of European engagement w...
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 ...
Sharon Thompson, "Quiet Revolutionaries: The Married Women's Association and Family Law" (Hart Publishing, 2022)
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This book tells the untold story of the Married Women's Association. Unlike more conventional histories of family law, which focus on legal actors, it...
Michèle Miller Sigg, "Birthing Revival: Women and Mission in Nineteenth-Century France" (Baylor UP, 2022)
05 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The nineteenth century witnessed a flurry of evangelical and missionary activity in Europe and North America. This was an era of renewed piety and int...
Share and Share Alike: Researching Sibling Relationships in Eighteenth-Century England
03 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What defines the complicated relationship between brothers and sisters—is it lineage? Love? Obligation? Friendship? Need? And why did so many parent...
Darcie Fontaine, "Modern France and the World" (Routledge, 2023)
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As she taught university-level courses on modern French history, Darcie Fontaine felt like she could not find a textbook that provided an up-to-date n...
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 ...
Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Taylor McCall's The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe (Reaktion, 2023) is the first history of medieval European anatomical images. Richly illustr...
Ben Highmore, "In Good Taste: How Britain's Middle Classes Found Their Style" (Manchester UP, 2023)
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did the rise of consumerism impact Britain? In In Good Taste: How Britain's Middle Classes Found Their Style (Manchester UP, 2023), Ben Highmor...
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...
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...
Lucy Moffat Kaufman, "A People’s Reformation: Building the English Church in the Elizabethan Parish" (McGill-Queen's Press, 2023)
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In A People’s Reformation: Building the English Church in the Elizabethan Parish (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) by Dr. Lucy Moffat Kauf...
Rahil Roodsaz, "Sexual Self-Fashioning: Iranian Dutch Narratives of Sexuality and Belonging" (Berghahn Books, 2022)
26 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sexuality and gender have come to serve as measures for cultural belonging in discussions of the position of Muslim immigrants in multicultural Wester...
Joel D. Anderson, "Reimagining Christendom: Writing Iceland's Bishops Into the Roman Church, 1200-1350" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With its expanding legal system and its burgeoning throngs of lawyers, legates, and documents, the papacy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries h...
Kyle A. Thomas and Carol Symes, "The Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo): A New Verse Translation, Edition, and Commentary" (Medieval Institute Publications, 2023)
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo) was composed around 1160 at the imperial Bavarian abbey of Tegernsee, at a critical point in t...
Kathleen Lubey, "What Pornography Knows: Sex and Social Protest Since the Eighteenth Century" (Stanford UP, 2022)
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kathleen Lubey,'s book What Pornography Knows: Sex and Social Protest Since the Eighteenth Century (Stanford UP, 2022) offers a new history of porno...
Ronan Bolton, "Making Energy Markets: The Origins of Electricity Liberalisation in Europe" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ronan Bolton's book Making Energy Markets: The Origins of Electricity Liberalisation in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) charts the emergence and ...
Brigitte Buettner, "The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture" (Penn State UP, 2022)
23 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Opulent jewelled objects ranked among the most highly valued works of art in the European Middle Ages. At the same time, precious stones prompted soph...
Robert Payne, "Reimagining the Family: Lesbian Mothering in Contemporary French Literature" (Peter Lang, 2021)
23 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Payne's Reimagining the Family: Lesbian Mothering in Contemporary French Literature (Peter Lang, 2021) is the first book-length study of repr...
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...
Owen Stanwood, "The Global Refuge: Huguenots in an Age of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2019)
22 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Owen Stanwood's newest book, The Global Refuge: Huguenots in an Age of Empire (Oxford UP, 2019), places the history of Huguenot refugees in a global...
"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...
Heidi Hausse, "The Malleable Body: Surgeons, Artisans, and Amputees in Early Modern Germany" (Manchester UP, 2023)
21 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Heide Hausse's book The Malleable Body: Surgeons, Artisans, and Amputees in Early Modern Germany (Manchester University Press, 2023) uses amputatio...
Mani Sharpe, "Late-Colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
19 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Late-Colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence, Mani Sharpe peploys the term “late-colonial” to describe (mostly) Frenc...
Judith Roumani, "Jews in Southern Tuscany During the Holocaust" (Lexington Books, 2020)
15 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The province of Grosseto in southern Tuscany shows two extremes in the treatment of Italian and foreign Jews during the Holocaust. To the east of the ...
Jacqueline Kinghan, "Lawyers, Networks and Progressive Social Change: Lawyers Changing Lives" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
11 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Written by a lawyer who works at the intersection between legal education and practice in access to justice and human rights, this book locates, descr...
Katherine Giuffre, "Outrage: The Arts and the Creation of Modernity" (Stanford UP, 2023)
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A cultural revolution in England, France, and the United States beginning during the time of the industrial and political revolutions helped usher in ...
The Future of the Sacred Nation: A Discussion with Anna M. Grzymała-Busse
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to the development of Western Europe there was religion and then there was science. That is how the story is generally told but Anna Gry...
Robert Mills, "Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages" (U Chicago Press, 2015)
09 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (University of Chicago, 2015) explores the relation between sodomy and motifs of vision and visibility in medieval ...
Kevin Killeen, "The Unknowable in Early Modern Thought: Natural Philosophy and the Poetics of the Ineffable" (Stanford UP, 2023)
09 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Kevin Killeen whose new monograph, The Unknowable in Early Modern Thought: Natural Philosophy and the Poetics of the Ineffable, ha...
Nicole Bauer, "Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth-Century France" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
08 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Between September 1793 and July 1794, the French politicians and even the general public seemed positively overcome by the urge to denounce their peer...
Marco Caboara, "Regnum Chinae: The Printed Western Maps of China to 1735" (Brill, 2022)
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Regnum Chinae: The Printed Western Maps of China to 1735 (Brill, 2022) does something that no one has ever done before: collect just about every West...
James Crossland, "The Rise of Devils: Fear and the Origins of Terrorism" (Manchester UP, 2023)
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the dying light of the nineteenth century, the world came to know and fear terrorism. Much like today, this was a time of progress and dread, in wh...
Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kathryn C. Higgins, "Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt" (Polity Press, 2023)
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Who is believed in our mediated world? In Believability: Sexual Violence, Media and the Politics of Doubt (Polity Press, 2023), Sarah Banet-Weise...
Apostolos Andrikopoulos, "Argonauts of West Africa: Unauthorized Migration and Kinship Dynamics in a Changing Europe" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In rapidly changing and highly precarious contexts, unauthorized African migrants turn to kinship in search of security, stability, and predictability...
Danny Orbach, "Fugitives: A History of Nazi Mercenaries During the Cold War" (Pegasus Books, 2022)
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Danny Orbach about his book Fugitives: A History of Nazi Mercenaries During the Cold War (Pegasus Books, 2022). Shrouded in gover...
Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War" (Stanford UP, 2023)
04 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at on...
Adhaar Noor Desai, "Blotted Lines: Early Modern English Literature and the Poetics of Discomposition" (Cornell UP, 2023)
04 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Almost every student that will enroll in a college Shakespeare course can expect two things. Students will have to engage with the style and themes of...
Katie Kadue, "Domestic Georgic: Labors of Preservation from Rabelais to Milton" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many early modern humanists would balk at the proposition that what they did amounted to housework. They were far more likely to reach for the heroic ...
Rose Marie San Juan, "Violence and the Genesis of the Anatomical Image" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023)
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nothing excited early modern anatomists more than touching a beating heart. In his 1543 treatise, Andreas Vesalius boasts that he was able to feel lif...
TaTa Dada: The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara
02 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tristan Tzara, one of the most important figures in the twentieth century's most famous avant-garde movements, was born Samuel Rosenstock (or Samueli ...
Greg A. Salazar, "Calvinist Conformity in Post-Reformation England: The Theology and Career of Daniel Featley" (Oxford UP, 2022)
01 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Calvinist Conformity in Post-Reformation England: The Theology and Career of Daniel Featley (Oxford UP, 2022) is the first modern full-scale examinat...
Joscha Abels, "The Politics of the Eurogroup: Governing Crisis and Conflict in the European Union" (Routledge, 2023)
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before this century's first global financial crisis struck Europe in 2007-2012, only people in the Brussels bubble had heard of the Eurogroup. By th...
Marie Arleth Skov, "Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation" (Intellect, 2023)
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In her book, Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023), Marie Arleth Skov examines the punk movement...
Joëlle Rollo-Koster, "The Great Western Schism, 1378-1417: Performing Legitimacy, Performing Unity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Great Schism divided Western Christianity between 1378 and 1417. Two popes and their courts occupied the see of St. Peter, one in Rome, and one in...
Queer Mysticism
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We close Pride Month of 2023 with Jamie Staples talking about queer mysticism. This includes instances in medieval Christianity where an embodied and ...
Daniel R. Smith, "The Fall and Rise of the English Upper Class: Houses, Kinship and Capital Since 1945" (Manchester UP, 2023)
28 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Who are the English upper class? In The Fall and Rise of the English Upper Class: Houses, Kinship and Capital Since 1945 (Manchester UP, 2023) Dani...
Miri Rubin, "The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2014)
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Middle Ages is a term coined around 1450 to describe a thousand years of European History. In The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford...
Lynsey Black, "Gender and Punishment in Ireland: Women, Murder and the Death Penalty, 1922-64" (Manchester UP, 2022)
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Lynsey Black is a lecturer in criminology, in the School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University. She researches in the areas of gender and pun...
Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Philip Stern places the corporation―more than the Crown―at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empi...
Rebecca Whiteley, "Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Whiteley's book Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body (University of Chicago Press, 2023) is first full study of “bir...
Marcello Musto, "The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography" (Stanford UP, 2020)
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the last years of his life, Karl Marx expanded his research in new directions-studying recent anthropological discoveries, analyzing communal forms...
Chris Millington, "The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939" (Stanford UP, 2023)
22 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939 (Stanford UP, 2023) investigates the political and social imaginaries of 'terrorism' in early twentie...
Lisabeth During, "The Chastity Plot" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
21 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Chastity Plot (U Chicago Press, 2021), Lisabeth During tells the story of the rise, fall, and transformation of the ideal of chastity. From i...
David Cressy, "Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea" (Oxford UP, 2022)
21 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dr. David Cressy is a work of social history examining community relationships,...
Mary M. McGlynn, "Broken Irelands: Literary Form in Post-Crash Irish Fiction" (Syracuse UP, 2022)
18 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview Mary M. McGlynn, Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, discusses her new book Broken Irelands: Literary Form in Post-Crash ...
Anna Piela, "Wearing the Niqab: Muslim Women in the UK and the US" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
16 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years the niqab has emerged as one of the most ubiquitous symbols of everything that is perceived to be wrong with Islam: barbarity, backw...
Susan McCall Perlman, "Contesting France: Intelligence and US Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
16 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With the defeat of France in 1940 by the Germans during World War II, its status as a world power was deeply shaken. It wasn't until the liberation by...
Michael B. Gill, "A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art" (Princeton UP, 2022)
14 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) was a troubled soul – negative, misanthropic, and deeply troubled by his negativity and misanthropy. In A...
Stephen G. Gross, "Energy and Power: Germany in the Age of Oil, Atoms, and Climate Change" (Oxford UP, 2023)
13 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since the 1990s, Germany has embarked on a daring campaign to restructure its energy system around renewable power, sparking a global revolution in so...
Robert Aldrich and Andreas Stucki, "The Colonial World: A History of European Empires, 1780s to the Present" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
12 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Colonial World: A History of European Empires, 1780s to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Robert Aldrich and Dr. Andreas Stucki provides the ...
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind, "Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis" (Harvard UP, 2023)
12 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis (Harvard UP, 2023) is a sweeping intellectual history of the concept of econ...