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. 1d ago

    Realism After the Individual: Women, Desire, and the Modern American Novel with Rafael Walker (U Chicago Press, 2025)

    The realist novel, so the story goes, isn’t really an American genre but a European and British one. And what the realist novel does—again, according to conventional wisdom—is entrench a liberal model of the individual: the self as autonomous and perfectible. Pushing back against these and other received ideas, Rafael Walker offers a self-professed “heretical” view of the history of the American novel in Realism after the Individual: Women, Desire, and the Modern American Novel (U Chicago Press, 2025).  A specialist in American and African American literature as well as gender and sexuality studies, Walker is Associate Professor of English and Black and Latino Studies at Baruch College and the editor of new editions of two essential American novels: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) and Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929).  In Realism after the Individual, his first book-length study, Walker shows how realist novels written by US authors from the 1890s to the 1920s transform our understanding of what the novel is and does in the American context. These novels are populated, Walker argues, with “post-individualist” individuals, particularly women, who want new things endlessly and who especially want what other people want—because they've adapted to America's brave new world of capitalist consumption and mass culture. In this conversation with Alix Beeston, Walker ranges widely and expertly across literary and intellectual history as he shares about women with insatiable desires, men who are killed off for not desiring enough, and the resonances between early twentieth-century literature and the present political moment. He also offers some recommendations for the important but now all-but-forgotten realist novels we should all be reading. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 4d ago

    David Bentley Hart on Life, Literature, and Baseball (U Notre Dame Press, 2026)

    Today I’m speaking with David Bentley Hart about his book, A Gathering of Leaves: Extravagances and Ephemera, from the University of Notre Dame Press. David is a multi-faceted scholar who has contributed to the fields of philosophy, religious studies, and baseball, among others. The volume we will be discussing today is a collection of essays mostly originating from his website, Leaves in the Wind. The essays span a wide array of ideas, jumping from Ty Cobb’s undeserved reputation to the merits and deficiencies of writers like Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, and Cormac McCarthy. David also considers contemporary politics and the challenges writers face with the widespread diffusion of artificial intelligence. Each subsequent essay is both unexpected and often delightful. David is known for his vibrant style, and one can’t help but feel that they need to spend more time consulting their dictionary. In fact, David even recommends one, or rather recommends Nabokov’s favorite: Webster’s International, Second edition from 1944. Unabridged, of course. I'm so grateful to get the opportunity to speak with David Bentley Hart about A Gathering of Leaves. David Bentley Hart is a writer, religious studies scholar, philosopher, cultural commentator, and writer of fiction. Read his Substack. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. 4d ago

    Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing with Katherine L. Alexander (U Michigan Press, 2025)

    Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing (U Michigan Press, 2025) by Katherine L. Alexander explores how one late Qing Confucian reformer sought to rebuild society in the aftermath of the Taiping Civil War. Focusing on the prolific writer and teacher Yu Zhi (1809–1874), the book examines how he used writing, printing, education, and performance to promote a vision of moral renewal from the ground up, arguing that ordinary people could become agents of social transformation through literature and teaching. Drawing on Yu Zhi’s extensive body of writings, the book shows how literature functioned not simply as a vehicle for moral instruction but as a practical tool for social reform. Through detailed and careful readings of Yu’s efforts to reach schoolchildren, women, and popular audiences through textbooks, morality plays, precious scrolls, and other forms of vernacular literature, the book reveals how conservative Confucian ideals were advanced through innovative and accessible media. More broadly, it offers a compelling portrait of how late imperial intellectuals responded to crisis and how they framed texts, performance, and education as a means to restore a fractured society. Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing should appeal to readers interested in late Qing history, popular literature, religion, education, and anyone interested in how print and performance can be used to shape ideas about moral reform and social change. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. 4d ago

    A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet with Daria S. Smirnova (Academic Studies Press, 2025)

    A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet (Academic Studies Press, 2025) makes the original and persuasive claim that Brodsky’s force as a transnational poet derives paradoxically from an inward-looking stance that privileges “the trope of the room” and a practice of self-translation that is faithful to his own internal poetics rather than the poetic norms of the target tradition. The resulting bilingual poetics is one that, though not universally accepted by English readers, ultimately had a profound effect on the Anglo-American literary tradition and anticipated certain foreignizing tendencies that have become central to translation studies and theories of transnationalism. No less powerful than the book’s thesis is the elegant analyses, which encompass Brodsky’s Russian poetry, his translations from Russian to English, and his English-language essays. Daria Smirnova holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon and a degree in Linguistics from Russia. Inspired by years of traveling between languages and cultures, her research explores literary translation, bilingualism, and transmediation. Daria's current archival research examines the role of translation in shaping literary canons. Amber Nickell is Assistant Professor of History at Louisiana State University, Editor at H-Ukraine, and Host at NBN Jewish Studies, Ukrainian Studies, and Eastern Europe. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. 5d ago

    11.1 Indie Presses and the Literary Ecosystem: Meg Reid and Will Evans

    Meg Reid and Will Evans join Mesha Maren to consider what makes up a literary ecosystem. As leaders of two nonprofit independent presses,Hub City Writers Project and Deep Vellum Press, Meg and Will describe their roles as publishers, booksellers, community builders, and advocates working with the many interconnected players in publishing: writers, readers, translators, critics, librarians, distributors, and funders. They discuss how independent presses create literary infrastructure by staying rooted in their communities, building relationships with readers, and making space for voices and stories that might otherwise be overlooked. The conversation turns to the impact of consolidation across the publishing industry and the effects of a marketplace increasingly shaped by scale. Will explains how Deep Vellum’s origins were tied to a concern that conglomeration was narrowing access to translated literature—and how that same narrowing affects writers and readers in local communities. Meg reflects on Hub City’s intentionally small publishing model and the ways independent presses can offer an alternative built around people rather than volume. Together, they explore the possibilities of a more diverse literary landscape, one where readers are invited to discover books beyond the dominant channels. From bookstores to distribution networks, Meg and Will unpack the systems that determine how books reach readers. They discuss why independent presses have increasingly opened their own bookstores, how distribution consolidation affects which books appear on shelves, and why availability in a warehouse does not necessarily mean availability in a bookstore. They also examine the difficult economics behind publishing: inventory costs, shipping, print runs, pricing, and the challenge of keeping books accessible while sustaining small presses. Closing with the announcement of the Literary Arts Fund’s first round of grants, Meg and Will reflect on what sustained philanthropic investment could mean for literary nonprofits. They describe the importance of long-term support that allows presses to take risks, deepen community work, and collaborate across the literary field. For both publishers, the future of books depends on strengthening the connections among all parts of the ecosystem—and finding ways to invite more people into it. Mentioned in this episode: Meg Reid, Hub City Writers ProjectWill Evans, Deep Vellum PressDan Sinykin, scholar and author of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature and American Literature & the Long DownturnIngramConsortium Book Sales & DistributionTwo Dollar RadioMilkweed EditionsCenter for the Art of TranslationTwo Lines PressThe Literary Arts FundMellon FoundationNational Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Oct 6

    Flannery and Regina: The Andalusia Chronicles with Carol Loeb Shloss

    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 father confined her to the family farm, Andalusia. The book fills in the gaps for fans of Flannery on the role of Regina in her life but more broadly presents a story of two women in the South of the 1950s and 1960s navigating financial independence, a changing rural landscape, and social norms.It’s a story of a mother and daughter, sometimes understanding each other, often not, but trying to cobble together parallel and overlapping lives. Perhaps most interesting to readers of O’Connor, or anyone interested in the biography of an author no longer able to control a public image, is the detailing of how Regina tried to direct and cultivate Flannery’s image after her death, though we get the sense she understood very little of her daughter as an artist. Carol Loeb Shloss is a former acting professor of English and Irish literature at Stanford University. Widely known for her work on modernist writers, her books include Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake, a Pulitzer Prize nominee and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Let the Wind Speak: Mary de Rachewiltz and Ezra Pound; Flannery O’Connor’s Dark Comedies: The Limits of Inference; and two books on literature and photography. Since writing her seminal book on Flannery O’Connor in 1980, she has published essays and reviews in Flannery O’Connor Review and many other journals. She currently resides in Philadelphia. 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 writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, available here on the New Books Network and wherever podcasts are found. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. Oct 4

    Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere with Nsah Mala, Richard Watts and Giulia Champion

    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 francophone writers have become ecological activists. The ecotexts discussed include graphic novels, visual narratives, and zines alongside more conventional literary texts such as novels, short stories and poetry. The book seeks to decentre Belgium and France in francophone ecocritical scholarship while engaging in current debates in the field of ecocriticism, including the afterlives of Belgian and French colonialism and neo-colonialism in relation to climate change and environmental degradation, Blue Humanities, waste and toxicity studies, critical animal and plant studies, Indigenous peoples and their cultures and knowledges, climate-environmental (in)justice, and writerly/textual activism for climate and environment. It aims to widen the geographical scope of francophone ecocriticism by discussing a wide range of eco-themes that go beyond the segmentation and compartmentalisation found in other books in the field. Guest Nsah Mala is a poet, writer, children’s author, consultant, editor and translator, journalist-communicator, futurist and foresight practitioner, and interdisciplinary scholar working in English, French and Mbesa. Nsah currently works for the University of Cologne, Germany, as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Hub Coordinator of the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition.His research interests include comparative literature, anglophone and francophone African literatures, public and environmental humanities, literary activism/artivism, creative writing and foresight and futures thinking. He has published widely in these areas in peer-reviewed volumes and journals, including Ecozon@, Orbis Litterarum, Electronic Green Journal, Humanities, Peripeti and ASAP/J. His ongoing projects on ‘Wetland Time’ and ‘Congo Basin Futures’ are funded by the British Academy and the Next Generation Foresight Practitioner Fellowship, respectively. Among many distinctions, he has judged the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and won the Dubai Foresight Award in the Foresight for the Planet category. Guest Richard Watts is Associate Professor of French in the Department of French and Italian Studies, co-creator of the Environments, Cultures and Values minor, and founding director of the Translation Studies Hub at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of Packaging Post/Coloniality: The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World (Lexington Books, 2005) as well as a series of articles on the intersections of francophone postcolonial studies and the environmental humanities. He is currently completing a book project titled Reclaimed Waters that considers how the pollution, privatization and manufactured scarcity of water are rapidly altering its ostensibly stable symbolic value in literature, cinema and other forms of cultural production in the Francosphere. Guest Giulia Champion is a Lecturer in Critical Ocean Studies at the University of Southampton. Her main research project is being developed in a monograph entitled The Political Construction of the Seabed: A Political Ethnography of the International Seabed Authority. This project explores the diplomatic processes of the United Nations body of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and the creation of a regulatory framework it is negotiating about deep-sea mining. The work explores this through a decolonial studies lens given the ISA’s location in Jamaica and its development of regulations about a new extractive frontier on the international seabed. Her work sits across the humanities and social sciences and uses arts-based methods for participatory public and policy engagement. She also collaborates on several projects including one on decarbonisation and electrical grids in Shetland, Orkney UK and Newfoundland, Canada; on Lithium extraction in Chile, and on safe swimming and access to green and blue spaces on the Isle of Wight, UK. She is an Associated Editor for the journal Environmental Humanities. She is the co-founder of the Deep Currents Collective, a group of activists and academics which holds a United Nation observer status at the International Seabed Authority. Her work has been published in (co-)authored articles in Bulletin of Latin American Research, The Journal of Energy History, Ocean and Society, Applied Energy, The Conversation, People and Nature and Comparative Law Journal of The Pacific. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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About

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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