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 us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

  1. 1時間前

    E. and H. Heron, "Flaxman Low: Occult Detective" (MIT Press, 2026)

    Flaxman Low, literature’s first professional, full-time “occult detective”—that is, an intrepid investigator who deploys the scientific method when tackling paranormal phenomena—appeared in a dozen stories first published from 1898–1899. Flaxman Low: Occult Detective (MIT Press, 2026), the latest edition to the Radium Age series from MIT Press, is introduced and discussed by Dr. Alexander B. Joy. Flaxman Low’s creators, the mother-and-son team Kate O’Brien Ryall Prichard and Hesketh “Hex” Prichard (who published as “E. and H. Heron”), endowed the Oxford-trained psychologist with the bravery and acumen to tackle every sort of adversary from ghosts, mummies, and vampires to a mushroom mannequin. Both less credulous and less cynical than earlier fictional investigators of the spirit world, Low always triumphs in the end . . . but not before scientifically demonstrating that even the most outré incidents and situations can’t hold a candle to the bizarre capacities of the human mind. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

    25分
  2. 1日前

    William H. F. Altman, "Ascent to the Good: The Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues from Symposium to Republic" (Lexington, 2018)

    At the crisis of his Republic, Plato asks us to imagine what could possibly motivate a philosopher to return to the Cave voluntarily for the benefit of others and at the expense of her own personal happiness. This book shows how Plato has prepared us, his students, to recognize that the sun-like Idea of the Good is an infinitely greater object of serious philosophical concern than what is merely good for me, and thus why neither Plato nor his Socrates are eudaemonists, as Aristotle unquestionably was. With the transcendent Idea of Beauty having been made manifest through Socrates and Diotima, the dialogues between Symposium and Republic—Lysis, Euthydemus, Laches, Charmides, Gorgias, Theages, Meno, and Cleitophon— prepare the reader to make the final leap into Platonism, a soul-stirring idealism that presupposes the student’s inborn awareness that there is nothing just, noble, or beautiful about maximizing one’s own good. While perfectly capable of making the majority of his readers believe that he endorses the harmless claim that it is advantageous to be just and thus that we will always fare well by doing well, Plato trains his best students to recognize the deliberate fallacies and shortcuts that underwrite these claims, and thus to look beyond their own happiness by the time they reach the Allegory of the Cave, the culmination of a carefully prepared Ascent to the Good. William H. F. Altman, having been persuaded by Plato's Republic that Justice requires the philosopher to go back down into the Cave, has devoted his professional life to the cause of public education. Since retiring in 2013, he has been working as an independent scholar on the continuation of Plato the Teacher (2012). Joseph Liss is an independent scholar based in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. He can be reached at Joseph.Nathaniel.Liss@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

    1時間23分
  3. 2日前

    10.1 "Extreme Circumstances, Extreme Reactions:” Aaron Gwyn and Sean McCann (JP)

    Aaron Gwyn is the author of four novels: The World Beneath, Wynn’s War, and, most recently, two wonderfully linked historical novels, All God’s Children, which won the Oklahoma Book award, and The Cannibal Owl. In his conversation with Sean McCann of Wesleyan (A Pinnacle of Feeling: American Literature and Presidential Government and Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism) and Novel Dialogue’s own John Plotz, we learn that Robert Lemmons is a real historical figure and so is Levi English.One way to grasp Gwyn’s achievement is to consider the contrast between his durably realist work and Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 Blood Meridian. Much as Aaron and Sean admire that novel, McCarthy’s characters strike them as monstrous and incredible. How about Charles Portis’s True Grit, asks John? Aaron loves it for its ventriloquizing power, and its truth-loving willingness to weave in unsettling back stories like Rooster Cogburn’s ties to Quantrill’s Rangers, an eerily modern pro-Confederate terrorist paramilitary. In our signature question, we learn why Aaron’s favorite teacher was Robert Hill, Pink-Floyd-loving drummer and perennial inspiration (audio here). Mentioned in the episode: Richard Slotkin’s notion of “the man who knows Indians” comes from Gunfighter Nation Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) Herman Melville, Moby Dick William Faulkner Absalom Absalom Toni Morrison, Beloved Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow. John Williams, Stoner (but also Butcher’s Crossing –-which John loves— and Augustus, which did indeed split the National Book Award (not the Pulitzer) in 1973 with John Barth’s Chimera. Larry McMurtry’s hard-to-get-into Lonesome Dove Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

    47分
  4. 5日前

    Dana A. Williams, "Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship" (Amistad, 2025)

    An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon's profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature. A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation's most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison's remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. During her tenure in editorial, Morrison refashioned the literary landscape, working with important authors, including Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and empowering cultural icons such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali to tell their stories on their own terms. Toni Morrison herself requested that Dana Williams be the one to tell this story, even giving her the book's title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship (Amistad, 2025) demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison's contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. With unparalleled insight and sensitivity, Toni at Random charts this editorial odyssey. Dr. N'Kosi Oates is a curator. He earned his Ph.D. in Africana Studies from Brown University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

    50分
  5. 6日前

    Charles Delgadillo and Jason Stacy, eds., "Heartland Utopia: William Allen White on the Ideal Midwestern Town" (UP of Kansas, 2026)

    For William Allen White, the ideal Midwestern community was a utopian vision of what America could be: a prosperous, happy community built on equality, opportunity, and neighborly generosity. This anthology collects White’s famous and obscure writings and presents him as the iconic voice of the Midwestern small town. William Allen White, the editor of The Emporia Gazette in Kansas, was an American institution. When he died in 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt commented that America had lost one of its “wisest and most beloved editors.” White understood the value of his unique brand as “the voice of Main Street,” and would often preach his vision of the kind of nation the United States ought to be. From his view in Emporia, White’s imagined Midwestern town was a dream for the nation to strive toward. He saw himself as a pioneer sowing the seeds of a great harvest to come, and he believed that the small-town civilization he venerated exemplified what was best in America. In Heartland Utopia: William Allen White on the Ideal Midwestern Town (UP of Kansas, 2026), Charles Delgadillo and Jason Stacy have gathered nearly twenty-five years of White’s fiction and nonfiction focused on his idealized Midwestern community and how this utopian vision changed over time. Charles Delgadillo is a lecturer in history at the California State University, Pomona, and the author of Crusader for Democracy: The Political Life of William Allen White, published by Kansas. Jason Stacy is Distinguished Research Professor of history and social science pedagogy at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. His books include Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town and Walt Whitman's Selected Journalism. You can hear another interview with him about his Spoon River America here on the New Books Network. Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

    54分
  6. 3月5日

    Damion Searls, "The Philosophy of Translation" (Yale UP, 2024)

    The Philosophy of Translation (Yale UP, 2024) is a fresh, approachable, and convincing account of what translation really is and what translators actually do. As the translator of sixty books from multiple languages, Damion Searls has spent decades grappling with words on the most granular level: nouns and verbs, accents on people’s names, rhymes, rhythm, “untranslatable” cultural nuances. In this book, he connects a wealth of specific examples to larger philosophical issues of reading and perception. Translation, he argues, is fundamentally a way of reading—but reading is much more than taking in information, and translating is far from a mechanical process of converting one word to another. This sharp and inviting exploration of the theory and practice of translation is for anyone who has ever marveled at the beauty, force, and movement of language. In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat down with Damion Searls to discuss The Philosophy of Translation, exploring what it truly means to read as a translator, how grammar shapes worldview, and where creativity lives in the space between languages. Damion Searls studied philosophy at Harvard and is a prominent translator from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch, including books by Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Rilke, Proust, Kielland, Jelinek, Schwitters, Mann, Modiano, and Fosse. His own books include the novel Analog Days, the poetry volume The Mariner’s Mirror, and The Inkblots, a history of the Rorschach test and biography of its creator. Ibrahim Fawzy is an Egyptian literary translator and writer. He is the translator of Hassan Akram’s A Plan to Save the World (Sandorf Passage, 2026). His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

    57分

番組について

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 us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

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