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New Books in Literary Studies

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow

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00:31:52

Flannery and Regina: The Andalusia Chronicles with...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/10/06

The story of two women in the mid-twentieth-century South navigating financial independence, a changing rural landscape, and social norms.Flannery and Regina: The Andalusia Chronicles (NewSouth Books, 2026)tells the story of Flannery O’Connor and her mother, Regina, after Flannery’s lupus diagnosis forced her to move back to Milledgeville, Georgia. Just as her career as one of the twentieth century’s most distinguished writers of short fiction was beginning to take off, the disease that killed her

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00:48:27

Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere with Nsah...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/10/04

Through a postcolonial lens, Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere (Liverpool, 2025) explores the various ways in which francophone writers, visual artists and activists are responding to the global climate and environmental crises threatening the Earth today.The volume covers most of the francosphere: Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, South America and Polynesia. As well as discussing a range of environmental issues, from soil erosion to nuclear testing, it also considers ways in which

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00:45:05

Aarthi Vadde has a Platform (JP)

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/10/01

It is fair to say Aarthi Vadde's wonderful new book, We The Platform, demostrates "how literature changes our perspective on the internet." But you also need to add that it "respond[s] to decline narratives about literature and literary study and to offer an alternative to prevailing sense of defeat and nostalgia that guides them.”Her conversation with John, like the book itself, aims to narrate the history of Web 2.0 from about 2004 to the present and to explore how writers themselves have

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00:29:25

Ilan Stavans on Building Restless Books and...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/30

How does an independent press survive by publishing the books the Big Five overlook? Amherst College professor and Spanglish scholar Ilan Stavans joins Sarah Russo to talk about Restless Books, the press he founded to champion immigrant writers, literature in translation, and the books that live between languages. Ilan shares the origin of Restless Books (including the investor who told him to take a finance course first), the creation of the Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature, and why he

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00:50:33

Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/27

Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt(SUNY Press, 2026) is an edited collection exploring utopias ad dystopias in films and literature. It challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia.The book brings together film, literary, and utopian studies scholars from across the world. As an interdisciplinary collection, it covers a wide range of utopias and dystopias, from those of

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00:50:52

Fitness for Freedom: Disability, Degeneration, and...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/27

Fitness for Freedom: Disability, Degeneration, and Modern Irish Writing(Syracuse UP, 2025)explores the legacy of intersectional stereotypes of disability, race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion that justified imperial rule in Ireland and the forms of oppression that continued after independence. Marion Quirici identifies models of citizenship and creative autonomy in Irish modernist literature that valorize vulnerability over ability and interdependence over independence. She uncovers a

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00:46:47

Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/26

Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and the humanities to argue rather for a distinct focus on materiality, engaging posthumanism, biotheory, and other cutting-edge theoretical

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01:09:14

Playing with Plays: Drama and Early Modern Chinese...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/25

How was drama experienced in early modern China? It was not tied to a single medium such as the page or the stage, but operated in a media ecology—an environment in which it integrated other arts and media while being refashioned in a variety of arts and media.Playing with Plays: Drama and Early Modern Chinese Media Ecologies (Brill, 2025)explores a wide range of cultural experimentation, collectively termed “playing with plays:” the theatricality embedded in commentary, the poetic and visual

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00:43:56

Emmy Waldman, "Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/24

Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and Comics Form (Cambridge UP, 2026) by Dr. Emmy Waldman is the first book to place the autobiographical projects of canonical comics authors Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel alongside each other, focusing on new and neglected works (and with an epilogue on the Pulitzer Prize-winning tour-de-force debut of Tessa Hulls). The book offers a lively cast of five formal tropes-boxes, spirals, tic-tac-toe, mirrors, and webs-through which to model fundamental

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00:57:10

Nathan Wainstein, "Bad Writing in the Modernist...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/23

What does it mean for a modernist novel to fail?Modernism famously celebrates rupture, difficulty, and deviance from literary norms—but that very embrace of formal experimentation creates a paradox: how can we tell the difference between daring innovation and genuinely bad writing?Bad Writing in the Modernist Novel (JHU Press, 2026)takes up this long-overlooked question and argues that modernist aesthetics have made artistic failure uniquely difficult to recognize, both in fiction and in literary

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01:00:32

Tess Chakkalakal, "A Matter of Complexion: The Life...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/23

In A Matter of Complexion: The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt(St. Martin's Press, 2025), Tess Chakkalakal gives readers the first comprehensive biography of Charles W. Chesnutt. A complex and talented man, Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland to parents who were considered “mixed race.” He spent his early life in North Carolina after the Civil War. Though light-skinned, Chesnutt remained a member of the black community throughout his life. He studied among students at the State Colored

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00:42:12

Randal Maurice Jelks, "My America: Langston Hughes on...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/22

Celebrated poet, essayist, playwright, and American artist Langston Hughes is one of the few American writers who consistently wrote about democracy from a joyous perspective, andMy Americaexplores how his work speaks to the political anxieties and crises we face today. Randal M. Jelks deftly examines the themes in Hughes’s work, including creative expression, communal dignity, class struggle, and human suffering, and what they mean for our inner well-being as democratic persons and political

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00:57:03

Exploring Earthsea: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Fantasy...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/20

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea saga has enchanted generations of readers and stands as a foundational classic of the fantasy genre. To mark publication of the definitive Library of America edition, acclaimed writers Karen Joy Fowler and Nghi Vo join volume editor Brian Attebery to kick off the fall LOA LIVE season with a fascinating plunge into these beloved novels of magic, dragons, nature, naming, and identity. LOA associate editor Stefanie Peters moderates. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company

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00:57:08

Xiaofei Tian, "Writing Empire and Self: Poetic and...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/19

China’s early medieval period, from the fifth through the early seventh century, from the Northern and Southern Dynasties through the unified Sui, was a time of political fragmentation, military strife, and ethnic conflict. It also witnessed brilliant artistic creations as well as a full flowering of court culture, with poetry at its heart. How did poetry come to be regarded as the most potent form of cultural capital, a privileged literary genre, and a foundational skill for members of the elite

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00:46:20

Tamara Hundorova, "Transit Culture and Postcolonial...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/19

Transit Culture and Postcolonial Trauma(Academic Studies Press, 2026) explores transitional post-Soviet cultural consciousness in Ukraine at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The main themes in the book are postcolonial traumas in relation to past empires and old historiographical narratives; post-totalitarian consciousness, which is characterized by sociocultural ruptures, postcolonial resentment, and intergenerational crises; and post-memory as a means of overcoming historical and

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42:04

Catherine A John, "Afroindigenization: A Theory of...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/15

In Afroindigenization: A Theory of Grassroots Cultural Practice (Duke University Press, 2026), Catherine A. John addresses the underbelly of spiritual resilience shaping a range of African diasporic institutions, traditions, and practices. John argues that repressed forms of indigenous African knowledge systems manifest in a myriad of culturally embodied ways in African diaspora spaces and places. From mermaid lore in rural Jamaica to hip-hop trance-induced dance in Los Angeles to the stories of two

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46:18

Christopher Freeburg, "Soul: A Brief History of Black...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/11

Today’s guest, Christopher Freeburg, is the author ofSoul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life(Yale University Press, 2026). This book explores the US history of black cultural life as a history of soul – a spiritual lived practice rooted in communally fostered music, religion, and politics. It makes the case that soul is forged through black community connections and that it’s sustained by moral principles, or pillars, which define how it is lived. The book’s four chapters are organized around

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75:14

A Nation Wrestles With God: American Prophets,...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/10

Spanning more than 400 years of spiritual transformation and imagination,A Nation Wrestles With God(Restless Books, 2026)collects diverse writers—poets, novelists, theologians, scientists, musicians, politicians, comedians, artists, mavericks, naturalists, futurists, and more—whose daring texts incited change and continue to influence a growing nation. In this anthology, you will find the stories, poems, letters, speeches, sermons, essays, song lyrics, comic strips, newspaper columns, and

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58:22

Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/09

In a world obsessed with expertise and control, the figure of the idiot illuminates deeper truths about society.In this interview,Morteza Hajizadeh interviewsLeonhard Emmerling about his bookThe Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus(Seagull Books, 2026)Dostoevsky and Nietzsche wrote about him; Dadaists and punks idolized him; artists like Warhol and Beuys made him their icon. From holy fool to punk rebel, the idiot—a figure that traces its roots back to the Greekidiotes, a person who was

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44:26

Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an...

New Books in Literary Studies ·

2026/09/08

As we approach the 50th anniversaries of Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novelRoots(1976) and its landmark television adaptation (1977), journalist and storyteller Lucas L. Johnson II reflects on the enduring legacy of Haley’s work through the voices of those it continues to move, including scholars, artists, genealogists, students, and original cast members like LeVar Burton and Ben Vereen. With vivid personal anecdotes, emotional tributes, and probing reflections,Remembering Roots: How an

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2,267 results

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