New Books in Western European Studies

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

“To live, a people must always be able to know its past, to judge it, to accept it.”— Simone Veil, French politician and Shoah survivor When I sat down with historian Anastasios Karababas to discuss his new book, In the Footsteps of the Jews of Greece: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Paperback, published January 30, 2024), I was struck by the depth and complexity of the story he tells—a story that spans over 2,500 years and is still unfolding today. Karababas in the book and the conversation guided me through the origins and evolution of Jewish life in Greece from ancient times to today. We discussed the four major Jewish groups whose histories are intertwined with the Greek landscape: Romaniots, the ancient Greek Jews whose presence predates the Romans. Ashkenazi Jews, who arrived between the 11th and 13th centuries, bringing their Central European traditions. Sephardic Jews, who found refuge in Greece after their expulsion from Spain in the 15th century, especially revitalizing the community in Thessaloniki. Italian Jews, who settled in the 16th century, further enriching the community’s diversity. Thessaloniki, once known as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," stood out in our conversation as a beacon of Jewish life, with Jews making up 30–40% of the city’s population at its height. Karababas’s account of the 20th century was both inspiring and heartbreaking. Before World War II, there were about 75,000 Jews in Greece. He shared the stories of Jews who served in the Greek army against Mussolini, a testament to their deep sense of belonging. But the Holocaust cast a long shadow, with 85% of the community deported and wiping out around 90% of the community leaving a profound void. Today, as Karababas explained, the Jewish population in Greece numbers only about 5,000, spread across nine communities—a stark contrast to the more than thirty that once existed. Only Athens, Thessaloniki, and Larissa still have resident rabbis. These communities survive through private funding and the interest of Jewish heritage tourism, striving to keep their unique traditions alive. Our discussion also touched on the complexities of Judeophobia in Greece. Karababas described Judeophobia as a blend of anti-semitism, anti-zionism, and anti-Judaism, with roots in the influence of the Greek Orthodox Church. He characterized current anti-semitism as “superficial,” with few violent incidents. Despite the rise in anti-zionist sentiment, he pointed out that Greece maintains strong governmental ties with Israel, reflecting the nuanced relationship between Greek society, its Jewish citizens, and the broader region. Reading In the Footsteps of the Jews of Greece: From Ancient Times to the Present Day and speaking with Karababas reminded me how vital it is to know, judge, and accept our past as a means of ensuring a safer future. The story of Greek Jewry is one of migration, tragedy, and renewal—a testament to resilience and the enduring spirit of a people determined to remember and to live. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Before the Greeks and Romans, the Celts ruled the ancient world. They sacked Rome, invaded Greece, and conquered much of Europe, from Ireland to Turkey. Celts registered deeply on the classical imagination for a thousand years and were variously described by writers like Caesar and Livy as unruly barbarians, fearless warriors, and gracious hosts. But then, in the early Middle Ages, they vanished. In The Celts, Ian Stewart tells the story of their rediscovery during the Renaissance and their transformation over the next few centuries into one of the most popular European ancestral peoples.The Celts shows how the idea of this ancient people was recovered by scholars, honed by intellectuals, politicians, and other thinkers of various stripes, and adopted by cultural revivalists and activists as they tried to build European nations and nationalisms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Long-forgotten, the Celts improbably came to be seen as the ancestors of most western Europeans—and as a pillar of modern national identity in Britain, Ireland, and France.Based on new research conducted across Europe and in the United States, The Celts reveals when and how we came to call much of Europe “Celtic,” why this idea mattered in the past, and why it still matters today, as the tide of nationalism is once again on the rise. Ian Stewart is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. His work has focused particularly on ideas of language, nation, and race in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain, Ireland, and Europe. He has also written at length on the late Scottish Enlightenment and is the co-editor of Adam Ferguson's Later Writings: New Letters and an Essay on the French Revolution (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Book Recomendations: Modern Ireland 1600-1972 by Roy Foster British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 by Colin Kidd The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress by Silvia Sebastiani Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Bringing John McGahern's 1965 masterpiece back into print in the United  States after years of inaccessibility, this new sixtieth-anniversary critical edition includes an introduction aimed at first-time readers, explanatory footnotes, McGahern's own glossary, and four scholarly essays aimed at guiding readers through the novel's famously controversial history. While the text was initially banned in Ireland for obscenity, this edition demonstrates that McGahern's novel of adolescence is not obscene, but revelatory, exposing the corruption  underlying authority structures in mid-century Ireland--from the family  to the church, to the government's willingness to ignore national and  communal trauma. The Dark follows a promising young boy's struggles to break free from the economic and social forces trapping him in a  lifestyle that is both familiar and suffocating. At the heart of the  novel is the boy's complex and stormy relationship with his abusive,  widowed father, who is left to raise a family with little outside aid. The Dark is a story of alarming brutality, surprising tenderness, and  poetic lyricism; a reflection of Irish society that maintains historical significance as contemporary Ireland continues to build its national  identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

No-one can fail to notice how many statues of Great Men there are around London: stern politicians, military generals, imperial adventurers . . . But what about women? As shown by Juliet Rix in London's Statues of Women (SafeHaven Books, 2025), women are surprisingly well represented amongst London’s statues. Recent years have seen new statues of Virginia Woolf in Richmond, Mary Wollstonecraft in Stoke Newington, even boxer Nicola Adams in Brent. But there are also groundbreaking statues commemorating the Black community, notably the two of Brixton resident Joy Battick on its railway station platforms. And you’ll find historical figures from Florence Nightingale to Joan of Arc and Edith Cavell – as well as Twiggy. And how many ballet dancers are commemorated, and where? And which famous tennis player was the unlikely model for the young girl with dolphin by Tower Bridge? This is a book that really will make you see London in a new way. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

From the moment Mary, Queen of Scots set foot on English soil in 1568 until her execution at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, she was the prisoner of her cousin, Elizabeth I. Unlike Mary’s time on the Scottish throne, the dramatic events of these years – almost half her life – took place while she was a captive. But while trouble was perpetually simmering beyond her prison walls, within them Mary was constantly plotting. Only towards the end did she lose faith in returning to her homeland as rightful ruler. Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots (Birlinn, 2025) by Rosemary Goring is the story of Mary’s tumultuous later years, told through the many atmospheric locations where she was confined. Drawing on the latest research, including a treasure trove of recently decoded letters, Exile sheds fascinating new light on her captivity and the charged political climate of the period. Reading like a 16th-century thriller, this account of treachery, deceit, hope and despair is a penetrating and enthralling psychological portrait of one of history’s endlessly fascinating queens. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

A new history of how the musical worlds of German towns and cities were transformed during the Nazi era. In the years after the Nazis came to power in January 1933 and through the war years all aspects of life in Germany changed. However, despite the social and political upheaval, gentile citizens were able to continue leisure activities such as attending concerts. In this book, historian Neil Gregor surveys the classical concert scene in Nazi Germany from the perspective of the audience, rather than institutions or performers. Gregor delves into the cultural lives of ordinary Germans under conditions of dictatorship. Did the ways in which Germans heard music in the period change? Did a Nazi way of listening emerge? For audiences, Gregor shows, changes to the concert experience were small and often took place around the edges. This, combined with the preserved idea of the concert hall as a space of imagined civility and cultivation, led many concertgoers and music lovers to claim after the war that their field and their practice had been innocent--a place to retreat from the vicious violence and racism of the Nazi regime. Drawing on untapped archival sources, The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany reveals that the true history was one of disruption but also of near effortless adaptation. Through countless small acts, the symphony concert was reframed within the languages of strident nationalism, racism, and militarism to ensure its place inside the cultural cosmos of National Socialist Germany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Samuel K Cohn, Jr. joins Jana Byars to talk about Popular Protest and the Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford University Press, 2025). This work, now out in paper, is the first study to analyse popular protest across the Italian peninsula and the Venetian colonies during the early modern period, 1494 to 1559. Drawing on over 100 contemporary chronicles and diaries, the fifty-eight volumes of Marin Sanudo's diplomatic dispatches, mercantile letters, and commentary, and 586 collective supplications scattered through archival sources from towns and villages in the Grand duchy of Milan, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. places these incidents and their patterns in comparative perspectives, first with the late medieval heyday of popular revolt and then with regions north of the Alps. Cohn finds new developments during the early modern period such as an increase in women rebels, mutinies of soldiers, and new tactics of revolts such as shop closures, peaceful demonstrations of strength, and use of religious processions for discussions of tactics and strategies for obtaining logistic advantage. At the same time, these protests show convergences with the medieval Italian past, with leaders coming almost exclusively from the ranks of nonelites, religious ideology playing a surprisingly minor role, and the majority of revolts centring overwhelming in towns and cities. Finally, this study demonstrates that democracies do not just die under the duress of military occupation and growing powers of autocratic regimes. Ideals of representation and equality not only persisted; they could emerge in new forms and with greater sophistication. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The first edited collection dedicated to the historical specifics of Irish shame Offers an anatomy of Irish shame as a cultural predicament Combines theoretical reading with historical and institutional context Includes essays by some of Ireland’s leading researchers on trauma and sexuality studies Shame has haunted Ireland since the inception of Irishness itself. As such, it has come to seem an ineluctable modality of Irish life. In fact, the contours of Irish shame have evolved over time, shifting with alterations in their colonial predicament, and in their response, whether complicit or resistant, to economic, political, and cultural dispossession. Irish Shame offers an anatomy of that condition. In twelve essays, it traces the ethnic, religious, biopolitical, psychosocial and neurodiverse parameters of shame as a force in Irish life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Michael Green joins Jana Byars to talk about his volume with co-editor Ineke Huysman, Private Life and Privacy in the Early Modern Low Countries (Brepols, 2023). This volume investigates the origins of one of the most important notions of the contemporary society: privacy. Based on case studies from the early modern Low Countries, privacy is tackled from various historical perspectives: social and cultural history, and the history of art and architecture.00The Dutch Republic is well-known for its financial success, which went hand in hand with the development of a distinguished bourgeois culture and religious toleration. The accumulation of wealth among the urban population led to changes in various spheres, from daily life to art. Privacy, as a concept, start to develop in this period. Indeed, new ideas about housing with the invention of corridors, separate rooms that could be locked, and the separation of the "common" and the "private" space, all illustrate the growing importance of privacy in this geographical area. In this volume, we trace perspectives on early modern privacy and private life based on primary sources in several domains: letters, diaries, and poems; genre painting in art; communal life as illustrated by the Jewish community; and finally, the homes of the Dutch elite.00The essays in this volume make a key contribution to the emergence of early modern privacy studies as a research field, and to the ongoing discussion of privacy in the Low Countries. Equally, these case studies can serve as models for the analysis of privacy in other European contexts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies