New Books in Western European Studies

How did public demand shape education in the 20th century? In The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain’s Transition to Mass Education since the Second World War (Oxford UP, 2020), Peter Mandler, Professor of Modern Cultural History at the University of Cambridge, charts the history of schools, colleges, and universities. The book charts the tension between demands for democracy and the defence of meritocracy within both elite and public discourses, showing how this tension plays out in Britain’s complex and fragmented education system. Offering an alternative vision to the popular memory and perception of education, a note of caution about the power of education to cure social inequalities, and a celebration of public demand for high quality education for all, the book is essential reading across the humanities, social sciences, and for anyone interested in understanding education in contemporary society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Thinking together the histories of European integration and African decolonization, Emily Marker's Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era (Cornell University Press, 2022) is a pathbreaking study of how the two continents continued to make another's histories in the years after the Second World War. Tracking the ways that young people and education figured in plans for the future of both the French empire and of an integrated Europe, the book pursues archival traces and arguments that illuminate continuing debates about race, religion, inclusion, national, and transnational identities.Pursuing policies and programs aimed at French imperial reform and renewal alongside attempts to inculcate a sense of Europeanness in a new generation of transnational citizens, Marker's chapters examine the contours of a postwar vision of a united Europe understood as at once "colorblind" and white, secular and Christian. When African students made claims for greater equality, they faced a "postwar racial common sense" that pointed up the limits of French and African solidarity in an era of decolonization. Drawing on an impressive body of research, Black France, White Europe will be of tremendous readers to scholars of France, Africa, and Europe. The book is a compelling history of the present that connects contemporary debates about race, religion, and belonging to a longer durée of national, transnational, imperial, and postcolonial worldmaking. I hope listeners will enjoy our conversation as much as I did! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Shakespeare Unlearned: Pedantry, Nonsense, and the Philology of Stupidity (Oxford UP, 2024) dances along the borderline of sense and nonsense in early modern texts, revealing overlooked opportunities for understanding and shared community in words and ideas that might in the past have been considered too silly to matter much for serious scholarship. Each chapter pursues a self-knowing, gently ironic study of the lexicon and scripting of words and acts related to what has been called 'stupidity' in work by Shakespeare and other authors. Each centers significant, often comic situations that emerge -- on stage, in print, and in the critical and editorial tradition pertaining to the period -- when rigorous scholars and teachers meet language, characters, or plotlines that exceed, and at times entirely undermine, the goals and premises of scholarly rigor. Each suggests that a framing of putative 'stupidity' pursued through lexicography, editorial glossing, literary criticism, and pedagogical practice can help us put Shakespeare and semantically obscure historical literature more generally to new communal ends. Words such as 'baffle' in Twelfth Night or 'twangling' and 'jingling' in The Tempest, and characters such as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Holofernes the pedant, might in the past have been considered unworthy of critical attention -- too light or obvious to matter much for our understanding of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Adam Zucker's meditation on the limits of learnedness and the opportunities presented by a philology of stupidity argues otherwise.Adam Zucker is a faculty member in the English Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches courses on Shakespeare and other 16th and 17th Century authors. In addition to Shakespeare Unlearned (Oxford University Press, 2024), he is the author of The Places of Wit in Early Modern English Comedy (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and the co-editor of essay collections Historical Affects and the Early Modern Theater (Routledge, 2015); and Localizing Caroline Drama: Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stage, 1625-1642 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Adam lives in Northampton, MA with his family, where he plays loud twangling instruments in the bands Outro, Bring It to Bear, The Young Old, and The Father Figures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

What were the key ideas and influences on Michel Foucault’s early career? In The Early Foucault (Polity Press, 2021), Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick and author of the Progressive Geographies blog, charts Foucault’s formative intellectual years leading up to the publication of the ground-breaking The History of Madness. The book uses a range of new archival material, much of which has been only recently accessible, to show the influence of teachers, mentors, and colleagues, as well as Foucault’s practice as an academic and writer during the 1950s and early 1960s. Telling the story of the possible intellectual trajectories, in psychology and philosophy, Foucault might have followed, along with a clear examination of the roots of his later work, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences.Dave O'Brien is Chancellor's Fellow, Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Edinburgh's College of Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

There is no shortage of Black characters in Miguel de Cervantes’s works, yet there has been a profound silence about the Spanish author’s compelling literary construction and cultural codification of Black Africans and sub-Saharan Africa. In Cervantine Blackness (Penn State UP, 2024), Nicholas R. Jones reconsiders in what sense Black subjects possess an inherent value within Cervantes’s cultural purview and literary corpus. In this unflinching critique, Jones charts important new methodological and theoretical terrain, problematizing the ways emphasis on agency has stifled and truncated the study of Black Africans and their descendants in early modern Spanish cultural and literary production. Through the lens of what he calls “Cervantine Blackness,” Jones challenges the reader to think about the blind faith that has been lent to the idea of agency—and its analogues “presence” and “resistance”—as a primary motivation for examining the lives of Black people during this period. Offering a well-crafted and sharp critique, through a systematic deconstruction of deeply rooted prejudices, Jones establishes a solid foundation for the development of a new genre of literary and cultural criticism. A searing work of literary criticism and political debate, Cervantine Blackness speaks to specialists and nonspecialists alike—anyone with a serious interest in Cervantes’s work who takes seriously a critical reckoning with the cultural, historical, and literary legacies of agency, antiblackness, and refusal within the Iberian Peninsula and the global reaches of its empire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective (Yale UP, 2024), Sara Lodge tells stories of women who brought 19th century criminals to justice, in real life and popular culture, as unacknowledged crime-fighters and feminist icons. On stage and in fiction, women detectives were sensational figures who fascinated the public with cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroines who captured thieves, flushed out cheats, and solved murders.Few people realize that these characters were based on real women who were active as detectives in private agencies and in the Victorian police force. Far from the mythology of an all-male world, women were a daily presence in police activity, although often underpaid and overlooked. They did important and dangerous work in a variety of roles both openly and as undercover agents. While the fictional characters were heroic figures who always saved the day, these morally ambiguous real women were sometimes paid to betray, deceive, or entrap in the murky underworld of Victorian society. Related resources:The interest in Victorian women detectives continues into the present with dozens of contemporary novels, film, and tv featuring Victorian female detectives. Miss Scarlet on PBS is an original series by Rachael New. The Enola Holmes and Enola Holmes 2 films on Netflix are based on the original Enola Holmes books written by Nancy Springer.More Sherlock Holmes adjacent charaters are Mary Russell by Laurie R. King and Lady Sherlock by Sherry Thomas.While many actual female detectives were working class, fictional portrayals often feature upper class heroines as private detectives such as Lady Darby by Anna Lee Huber, Lady Emily by Tasha Alexander, and both Veronica Speedwell and Lady Julia Grey by Deanna Raybourn. Author recommended readingA Flat Place by Noreen MasudHosted by Meghan Cochran  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People (Basic Books, 2024) is the first English-language biography of Henri Bergson, the philosopher who defined individual creativity and transformed twentieth century thought.At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinkers sketched out a predictable universe, he asserted the transformative power of consciousness and creativity. An international celebrity, he made headlines around the world debating luminaries like Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein about free will and time. The vision of creative evolution and freedom he presented was so disruptive that the New York Times branded him "the most dangerous man in the world."In the first English-language biography of Bergson, Emily Herring traces how his celebration of the time-bending uniqueness of individual experience struck a chord with those shaken by modern technological and social change. Bergson captivated a society in flux like no other. Long after he faded from public view, his insights into memory, time, joy and creativity continue to shape our perceptions to this day. Herald of a Restless World is an electrifying portrait of a singular intellect.Emily Herring is a writer based in Paris. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and received her PhD in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Leeds. Her work has appeared in the TLS and Aeon.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The British Marxist Historians, originally published in 1995, remains the first and most complete study of the founders of one of the most influential contemporary academic traditions in history and social theory. In this classic text, Kaye looks at Maurice Dobb and the debate on the transition to capitalism; Rodney Hilton on feudalism and the English peasantry; Christopher Hill on the English Revolution; Eric Hobsbawm on workers, peasants and world history; and E.P. Thompson on the making of the English working class. Kaye compares their perspective on history with other approaches, such as that of the French Annales school, and concludes with a discussion of the British Marxist historians' contribution to the formation of a democratic historical consciousness. The British Marxist Historians is an indispensable book for anyone interested in the intellectual history of the late twentieth century.Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, an award-winning author of numerous books, including Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, and a repeat guest on radio and television programs such as To the Best of Our Knowledge, the Thom Hartmann Show, and Bill Moyers' Journal. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In the late-18th century, a group of publishers in what historian Robert Darnton calls the "Fertile Crescent" — countries located along the French border, stretching from Holland to Switzerland — pirated the works of prominent (and often banned) French writers and distributed them in France, where laws governing piracy were in flux and any notion of "copyright" very much in its infancy. Piracy was entirely legal and everyone acknowledged — tacitly or openly — that these pirated editions of works by Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot, among other luminaries, supplied a growing readership within France, one whose needs could not be met by the monopolistic and tightly controlled Paris Guild.Darnton's book Pirating and Publishing: The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment (Oxford UP, 2021) focuses principally on a publisher in Switzerland, one of the largest and whose archives are the most complete. Through the lens of this concern, he offers a sweeping view of the world of writing, publishing, and especially bookselling in pre-Revolutionary France--a vibrantly detailed inside look at a cut-throat industry that was struggling to keep up with the times and, if possible, make a profit off them. Featuring a fascinating cast of characters — lofty idealists and down-and-dirty opportunists — this new book expands upon on Darnton's celebrated work on book-publishing in France, most recently found in Literary Tour de France. Pirating and Publishing reveals how and why piracy brought the Enlightenment to every corner of France, feeding the ideas that would explode into revolution.Zach McCulley (@zamccull) is a historian of religion and literary cultures in early modern England and PhD candidate in History at Queen's University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Who is Jacques Derrida? For some, he is the originator of a relativist philosophy responsible for the contemporary crisis of truth. For the far right, he is one of the architects of Cultural Marxism. To his academic critics, he reduced French philosophy to “little more than an object of ridicule.” For his fans, he is an intellectual rock star who ranged across literature, politics, and linguistics. In An Event, Perhaps (Verso, 2020), Peter Salmon presents this misunderstood and misappropriated figure as a deeply humane and urgent thinker for our times.Born in Algiers, the young Jackie was always an outsider. Despite his best efforts, he found it difficult to establish himself among the Paris intellectual milieu of the 1960s. However, in 1967, he changed the whole course of philosophy: outlining the central concepts of deconstruction. Immediately, his reputation as a complex and confounding thinker was established. Feted by some, abhorred by others, Derrida had an exhaustive breadth of interests but, as Salmon shows, was moved by a profound desire to understand how we engage with each other. It is a theme explored through Derrida’s intimate relationships with writers such even as Althusser, Genet, Lacan, Foucault, Cixous, and Kristeva. Accessible, provocative and beautifully written, An Event, Perhaps will introduce a new readership to the life and work of a philosopher whose influence over the way we think will continue long into the twenty-first century.Peter Salmon is an Australian writer living in the UK. His first novel, The Coffee Story, was a New Statesman Book of the Year. He has written for the Guardian, the New Humanist, the Sydney Review of Books and Tablet, as well as Australian TV and radio. Formerly Centre Director of the Jon Osborne/The Hurst Arvon Centre, he also teaches creative writing.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies