New Books in Literary Studies

so some of the podcast episodes present right-wing "scholarship" of dubious merit. that's fine. people can listen and make their own judgments. for all authors, interviewers should allow time for them to present their perspectives, but there should also be thorough and respectful challenging, including sources, methodology, potential gaps, and questioning about contrary perspectives. this is not always done, to the detriment of the audience and the authors. where the podcast fails is where so much of American discourse fails. it highly privileges academic work from the western and particularly the anglo world. you might need international language speakers and translators, but you should do that! this diversity of perspective from the rest of the 8 billion ppl on the planet is somehow completely ignored by the right wing campaign for "diversity of viewpoints." unless of course, the point of this endeavor is only to increase book sales a bit, and you assume there won't be many takers for non-English works. i would argue that these works have much more chance of being translated if they're actually given a chance to be presented.