PODCAST

New Books with Miranda Melcher

New Books Network

A special series of interviews hosted by Dr. Miranda Melcher.

arts books

All Episodes

67:03

Barbara Allen, "Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/16

Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction (Reaktion, 2025) by Reverend Barbara Allen presents thirty-one extinct species through the personal perspectives of those animals. This intimate approach not only highlights each species but explores the broader implications of losing a species forever. How do we honour such a loss? Can we grieve for species we never knew? These animals range from the well-known passenger pigeon, thylacine and great auk, to lesser-known creatures like the

55:41

Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, "The Pathogens of...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/14

The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Brent Z. Kaup & Dr. Kelly F. Austin is an exploration of how the rising power and profits of Wall Street underpin the contemporary increases in and inadequate responses to vector-borne disease. Over the past fifty years, insects have transmitted infectious diseases to humans with greater frequency and in more unexpected places. To examine this phenomenon, Dr. Kaup and Dr. Austin take

64:32

Samuel Rutherford, "Teaching Gender: The British...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/14

In Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, universities were one of many institutional state structures wherein gender difference, the male breadwinner ideal, and heterosexuality were central to a conception of citizenship. But while the state could enforce these norms through the parameters it set on the extension franchise or the distribution of welfare benefits, individual women and men also played active roles in creating and renegotiating them through the messy

55:14

Sarah Bilston, "The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/11

In 1818, a curious root arrived in a small English village, tucked—seemingly by accident—in a packing case mailed from Brazil. The amateur botanist who cultivated it soon realized that he had something remarkable on his hands: an exceptionally rare orchid never before seen on British shores. It arrived just as “orchid mania” was sweeping across Europe and North America, driving a vast plant trade that catered to wealthy private patrons as well as the fast-growing middle classes eager to display

66:25

Alison Griffiths, "Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/11

From In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters to The Epic of Everest to Camping Among the Indians, the early twentieth century was the heyday of expedition filmmaking. As new technologies transformed global transportation and opened new avenues for documentation, and as imperialism and capitalism expanded their reach, Western filmmakers embarked on journeys to places they saw as exotic, seeking to capture both the monumental and the mundane. Their films portrayed far-flung locales, the hardships of

53:18

Sladja Blažan, "Ghosts and Their Hosts: The...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/08

In Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America (University of Virginia Press, 2025), Dr. Sladja Blažan explains the foundational role of ghost stories in fostering the cultural imaginary, offering a medium for framing political ideologies, philosophical thought, racial anxieties, and social concerns. Ghosts and Their Hosts analyzes American ghost stories, considering their role as a settler colonial tool that emerged to help justify land appropriation and human

42:58

Harrison Browne and Rachel Browne, "Let Us Play:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/08

The debate over the inclusion of gender diverse people in sport has become the latest battleground in the fight for basic human rights and equality. Trans and nonbinary people around the world are facing physical harm and violence—including death—at unprecedented rates. In Let Us Play: Winning the Battle for Gender Diverse Athletes (Beacon Press, 2025), trans athlete Harrison Browne and investigative journalist Rachel Browne reveal how the opposition towards gender diverse athletes is fueled by fear

64:05

Jenn Hobbs, "Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/07

In recent years, security actors have become increasingly concerned with health issues. Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics and Security (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. Jenn Hobbs reveals how understandings of race, sexuality and gender are produced/reproduced through healthcare policy.Analysing the plasma of paid Mexicana/o donors in the US, airport vomit in Ebola epidemics and the semen of soldiers with genitourinary injuries, this

32:13

Coll Thrush, "Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/03

The Northwest Coast of North America is a treacherous place. Unforgiving coastlines, powerful currents, unpredictable weather, and features such as the notorious Columbia River bar have resulted in more than two thousand shipwrecks, earning the coastal areas of Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island the moniker “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Beginning with a Spanish galleon that came ashore in northern Oregon in 1693 and continuing into the recent past, Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the

62:25

Bonnie Yochelson, "Too Good to Get Married: The Life...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/03

In Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen (Fordham University Press, 2025) by Dr. Bonnie Yochelson, explore Gilded Age New York through the lens of Alice Austen, who captured the social rituals of New York’s leisured class and the bustling streets of the modern city. Celebrated as a queer artist, she was this and much more.Alice Austen (1866–1952) lived at Clear Comfort, her grandparent’s Victorian cottage on Staten Island, which is now a National Historic Landmark

66:47

Anthony C. Infanti, "The Human Toll: Taxation and...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/03

The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press, 2025) by Anthony C. Infanti documents how the American colonies used tax law to dehumanize enslaved persons, taxing them alongside valuable commodities upon their forced arrival and then as wealth-generating assets in the hands of slaveholders. Dr. Infanti examines how taxation also proved to be an important component for subjugating and controlling enslaved persons, both through its shaping of the composition of new arrivals to

65:30

Carol A. Heimer, "Governing the Global Clinic: HIV...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/02

HIV emerged in the world at a time when medicine and healthcare were undergoing two major transformations: globalization and a turn toward legally inflected, rule-based ways of doing things. It accelerated both trends. While pestilence and disease are generally considered the domain of biological sciences and medicine, social arrangements—and law in particular—are also crucial.Drawing on years of research in HIV clinics in the United States, Thailand, South Africa, and Uganda, Governing the Global

53:49

Robert Garland, "What to Expect When You're Dead: An...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/02

A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Robert Garland explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditions—Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Early Christian, and Islamic. By drawing on the latest scholarship on ancient archaeology, art, literature, and funerary inscriptions, Dr. Garland invites

63:37

Katarina Kušic, "Beyond International Intervention:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/06/01

Studies of statebuilding and peacebuilding have been criticized for their disregard of people living the consequences of intervention projects. Beyond International Intervention: Politics of Improvement in Serbia (University of Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Katarina Kušic takes on the task of engaging with spaces and peoples not usually present in IR scholarship to rethink the very concept of “intervention” by paying close attention to how people actually experience and make sense of those efforts

59:12

Jack Ashby, "Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/05/31

In Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums (Penguin, 2025), zoologist Jack Ashby shares hidden stories behind the world’s iconic natural history museums, from enormous mounted whale skeletons to cabinets of impossibly tiny insects.Look closely and all is not as it seems: these museums are not as natural, Ashby shows us, as we might think. Mammals dominate the displays, for example, even though they make up less than 1 percent of species; there are many more male

44:50

Catriona M.M. MacDonald, "The Caledoniad: The Making...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/05/30

Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the historical narrative the only legitimate medium through which the past can be made known? Are novelists and historians as far apart as convention has it? In an age when history grounds any claims to national status, these are important questions and they have implications for how Scottish history has evolved, and how Scottish identity has been

43:40

Nao Tomabechi, "Supervillains: The Significance of...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/05/29

Alongside superheroes, supervillains, too, have become one of today’s most popular and globally recognizable figures. However, it is not merely their popularity that marks their significance. Supervillains are also central to superhero storytelling to the extent that the superhero genre cannot survive without supervillains.Bringing together different approaches and critical perspectives across disciplines, in Supervillains: The Significance of Evil in Superhero Comics (Rutgers University Press,

45:48

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/05/27

Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, how did people secure their private letters? The answer is letterlocking—the ingenious process of securing a letter using a combination of folds, tucks, slits, or adhesives such as sealing wax, so that it becomes its own envelope. This almost entirely forgotten practice, used by historical figures ranging from Elizabeth I and her spies to Japanese samurai lords, was an everyday activity for centuries, across cultures, borders, and social

61:12

Richard D. Oram, "A Land Won from Waste: Scotland AD...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/05/24

Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland explores the interaction of human populations with land, waters, forests and wildlife.A Land Won From Waste: Scotland AD 400–1400 (John Donald/Birlinn, 2025) by Professor Richard Oram takes the reader from the climatic highs of the Late Iron Age to the depths of the war-torn and plague-ravaged fourteenth century. Departing from traditional frameworks

41:40

Janine Schipper, "Conservation Is Not Enough:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/05/24

Conservation Is Not Enough: Rethinking Relationships with Water in the Arid Southwest (University of Wyoming Press, 2025) by Dr. Janine Schipper reconsiders the most basic assumptions about water issues in the Southwest, revealing why conservation alone will not lead to a sustainable water future. The book undertakes a thorough examination of the prevailing “conservation ethos” deeply ingrained in the culture, critically analyzing its historical roots and shedding light on its problems and inherent

1,025 results

New Books with Miranda Melcher

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

Start The Breakthrough Full Audiobook Now, Thriller Fans!

thebookvoice.com

Get Hooked On The Life-Enhancing Full Audiobook Experience!

thebookvoice.com

西四五条

主播郑捕头

Podcast Patapoe

0d0a

On Mic Podcast

Jordan Rich