New Books in Western European Studies

Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) reveals how political and literary dialogues and conflicts between the Hebrew literature of the Hasidism, the Jewish Enlightenment, and Zionism interacted with each other in the nineteenth century. Hannan Hever uses postcolonial theories and theories of nationality to analyze how Jews used literature to make sense of hostility directed toward Jews from their European “host” countries and to set forth their own ideas and preferences regarding their status, control, and treatment. In doing so, Hever theorizes the Enlightenment’s intellectual aims and cultural influences, tracking how the models of integration crucial to Haskalah gave way to Jewish nationalism in the twentieth century.The readings in this book are theoretically informed, setting forward novel claims based on detailed textual analyses of hasidic tales, Haskalah satires, and Zionist narratives. Thus, this book tackles a major interpretative problem visible at the core of modern Hebrew literature—its radical difficulty in distinguishing between the theological components of modern Jewish discourse and 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

In Enlightenment Biopolitics (U Chicago Press, 2024), historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical thought emerged and circulated. He locates that context in the Enlightenment when emancipatory ideals sat alongside the horrors of colonialism, slavery, and race-based discrimination. In fact, these did not just coexist, Nelson argues; they were actually mutually constitutive of Enlightenment ideals.In this book, Nelson focuses on Enlightenment-era visions of eugenics (including proposals to establish programs of selective breeding), forms of penal slavery, and spurious biological arguments about the supposed inferiority of particular groups. The Enlightenment, he shows, was rife with efforts to shape, harness, and “organize” the minds and especially the bodies of subjects and citizens. In his reading of the birth of biopolitics and its transformations, Nelson examines the shocking conceptual and practical connections between inclusion and exclusion, equality and inequality, rights and race, and the supposed “improvement of the human species” and practices of dehumanization.William Max Nelson is associate professor of history at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Time of Enlightenment: Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One and a coeditor of The French Revolution in Global Perspective.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

Murder in a cathedral, horrific illnesses and deformities, narrow escapes from injury and death, a vengeful dragon, a wandering eyeball, a bawdy monk and other sinners redeemed—the accounts of miracles performed by the Virgin Mary gathered and translated in The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France (Cornell UP, 2024) provide vivid glimpses into medieval life and beliefs. Bruce L. Venarde provides fluent translations of the first five collections of Marian miracle narratives from France, written in the second quarter of the twelfth century and never before available in English.The stories recorded in these collections—by Herman of Tournai; Hugh Farsit; Haimo of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives; John, son of Peter; and Gautier of Compiègne—offer descriptions of travel, living conditions, medical knowledge, conflict between and among lay and religious authorities, and the burgeoning cult of the Virgin Mary, which had only recently become important in Western Europe. Including notes, tables, and maps that orient and illuminate the texts, The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France makes these riveting tales available to readers seeking a view into the medieval past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

An accessible book to draw on popular interest in transport history, routes, vehicles and experiences. Transport history is social and industrial national history. Passengers and freight will be covered including all types of transport from walking and packhorses, that predominated for much of national history, both of which tend to be underrated, to changes brought by improvements to road transport from the Romans to medieval bridgebuilders and eighteenth-century turnpikes, and, in parallel, river, coastal and canal travel, again from the Romans to the eighteenth century. The story moves to the age of rail, motoring and lastly air. All forms overlap. as well as being sequential. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Imprisonment was rarely used as punishment in Britain before 1800. The criminal justice system was based on terror and deterrence, sentencing convicts to the gallows at home and transportation overseas, with prisons serving primarily as holding spaces for the accused until the case against them was resolved. A major shift began in the late eighteenth century when imprisonment became an end in itself: a means to reform as well as to discipline criminal offenders.To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750–1840 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025) by Dr. Kiran Mehta revisits this revolutionary moment as it played out in the metropolis of London. Dr. Mehta charts how Londoners, through their interactions with police, magistrates, and judges, became prisoners, and then follows them into the prison, revealing how these institutions were managed and experienced. Local authorities’ increased use of imprisonment, for punishment as well as for detention, sparked the wholesale reconstruction and redesign of London’s prison estate. It also spurred the consolidation of the modern notion that prisoners who had not yet been convicted of a crime, or who had not been sentenced to imprisonment, should be held separately from and treated differently to those incarcerated for punishment. Most notably, the requirement to labour became a distinguishing feature of punitive confinement.Challenging traditional ideas about who and what prisons were for and how they operated, To Detain or to Punish offers a radical reappraisal of London’s prison system between 1750 and 1840. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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 episodes 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

Boaters of London is an ethnography that delves into the process of becoming a boater, adopting an alternative lifestyle on the water and the political impact that this travelling population has on the state.London and the Southeast of England in general is home to many people and families who live on narrowboats, cruisers and barges, along a network of canals and rivers. Many of these 'boaters' move from place to place every two weeks and form itinerant communities in the heart of some of the UK’s most crowded urban spaces. Boaters of London delves into the process of becoming a boater and the political impact of this travelling population on the state, the volume examines an alternative style of living and the potential of a life spent afloat.Ben Bowles is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at SOAS, University of London. He is also Course Lecturer at Fordham University, London Campus, and Research Fellow at the Open University’s Centre for Policing Research and Learning. His research interests include economic and political anthropology, and the anthropology of the UK.Yadong Li is a socio-cultural anthropologist-in-training. He is registered as a PhD student at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of economic anthropology, medical anthropology, hope studies, and the anthropology of borders and frontiers. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Questions about the meaning of womanhood and femininity loomed large in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French culture. In Playing Cleopatra: Inventing the Female Celebrity in Third Republic France (LSU Press, 2024), Dr. Holly Grout uses the theater—specifically, Parisian stage performances of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra by Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, and Josephine Baker—to explore these cultural and political debates. How and why did portrayals of Cleopatra influence French attitudes regarding race, sexuality, and gender? To what extent did Bernhardt, Colette, and Baker manipulate the image of Cleopatra to challenge social norms and to generate new models of womanhood? Why was Cleopatra—an ancient, mythologized queen—the chosen vehicle for these spectacular expressions of modern womanhood?In the context of late nineteenth-century Egyptomania, Cleopatra’s eroticized image—as well as her controversial legacy of female empowerment—resonated in new ways with a French public engaged in reassessing feminine sexuality, racialized beauty, and national identity. By playing Cleopatra, Bernhardt, Colette, and Baker did more than personify a character; they embodied the myriad ways in which celebrity was racialized, gendered, and commoditized, and they generated a model of female stardom that set the stage for twentieth-century celebrity long before the Hollywood machine’s mass manufacture of “stars.” At the same time, these women engaged with broader debates regarding the meaning of womanhood, celebrity, and Frenchness in the tumultuous decades before World War II.Drawing on plays, periodicals, autobiographies, personal letters, memoirs, novels, works of art, and legislation, Playing Cleopatra contributes to a growing body of literature that examines how individuals subverted the prevailing gender norms that governed relations between the sexes in liberal democratic regimes. By offering employment, visibility, and notoriety, the theater provided an especially empowering world for women, in which the roles they played both reflected and challenged contemporary cultural currents. Through the various iterations in which Bernhardt, Colette, and Baker played Cleopatra, they not only resurrected an ancient queen but also appropriated her mystique to construct new narratives of womanhood.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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 episodes 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 Kensington to the East End, under candlelight, gas lamp and then neon signs, London is both a bustling physical metropolis and a stirring psychic encounter. The most depraved depictions of London in fiction, film, poetry, television and theatre have irrevocably merged with the reality of its dark history, creating a phantasmagoria defined by murder, vice and the unnatural. In this panoptic look at the capital at its most eerie and macabre, Dr. Clive Bloom takes a tour of Gothic London's uncanny literature, arcane events and its infamous and imagined geographies.From David Bowie to T S Eliot, Thomas de Quincey to Aleister Crowley, the prophetess Joanna Southcott to the 'ghosts' of Abba and the worlds of Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker, these are the figures that populate a city lost in fog and blind alleys, where the dead can be raised, the living sacrificed and the clandestine thrive. Suturing together fact and fantasy, London Uncanny: A Gothic Guide to the Capital in Weird History and Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2025) presents the urban landscape of the capital as a space of wonder and madness, haunted by its past and haunting the present. Stalking through disease and degeneracy, death and murder, spiritualism, lunacy and the occult, Bloom crafts a singular, integrated concept of a London where dreams and nightmares meet.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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 episodes 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

Mick Brown’s The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West (Oxford UP, 2023) is a riveting account about the West's engagement with Eastern spirituality across a century. It traces the life of multiple characters that intersected across time and space to create a network of interlinking stories about saints, salesmen and scoundrels all involved in spirituality.From Edwin Arnold, whose epic poem about the life of the Buddha became a best-seller in Victorian Britain, to the occultist and magician Aleister Crowley; and from spiritual teachers Jiddu Krishnamurti, Meher Baba and Ramana Maharshi to the controversial guru Rajneesh, The Nirvana Express is an exhilarating, sometimes troubling journey through the West's search for enlightenment.Archit Nanda is PhD scholar in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2024) introduces the work and legacy of philosopher Émilie Du Châtelet. As the Enlightenment gained momentum throughout Europe, Châtelet broke through the many barriers facing women at the time and published a major philosophical treatise in French. Due to her proclamation that a true philosopher must remain an independent thinker rather than a disciple of some supposedly great man like Isaac Newton or René Descartes, Châtelet posed a threat to an emerging consensus in the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman highlights the exclusion of women from colleges and academies in Europe and the fear of rupturing the gender-based order.Andrew Janiak is Professor of Philosophy and Bass Fellow at Duke University.Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies