New Books in Western European Studies

Ronan Bolton's book Making Energy Markets: The Origins of Electricity Liberalisation in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) charts the emergence and early evolution of electricity markets in western Europe, covering the decade from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. Liberalising electricity marked a radical deviation from the established paradigm of state-controlled electricity systems which had become established across Europe after the Second World War. By studying early liberalisation processes in Britain and the Nordic region, and analysing the role of the EEC, the book shows that the creation of electricity markets involved political decisions about the feasibility and desirability of introducing competition into electricity supply industries. Competition introduced risks, so in designing the process politicians needed to evaluate who the likely winners and losers might be and the degree to which competition would impact key national industries reliant on cross-subsidies from the electricity sector, in particular coal mining, nuclear power and energy intensive production. The book discusses how an understanding of the origins of electricity markets and their political character can inform contemporary debates about renewables and low carbon energy transitions.Ronan Bolton is a Reader in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and the Co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre. His work examines the interconnected policy, market and regulatory challenges of transforming carbon based energy systems. His particular research interests are focused in the areas of energy network regulation and system integration, along with the the history and development of liberalisation processes in the energy sector.Filippo De Chirico studies History and Politics of Energy at Roma Tre University (Italy). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Kathleen Lubey,'s book What Pornography Knows: Sex and Social Protest Since the Eighteenth Century (Stanford UP, 2022) offers a new history of pornography based on forgotten bawdy fiction of the eighteenth century, its nineteenth-century republication, and its appearance in 1960s paperbacks. Through close textual study, Lubey shows how these texts were edited across time to become what we think pornography is—a genre focused primarily on sex. Originally, they were far more variable, joining speculative philosophy and feminist theory to sexual description. Lubey's readings show that pornography always had a social consciousness—that it knew, long before anti-pornography feminists said it, that women and nonbinary people are disadvantaged by a society that grants sexual privilege to men. Rather than glorify this inequity, Lubey argues, the genre's central task has historically been to expose its artifice and envision social reform. Centering women's bodies, pornography refuses to divert its focus from genital action, forcing readers to connect sex with its social outcomes. Lubey offers a surprising take on a deeply misunderstood cultural form: pornography transforms sexual description into feminist commentary, revealing the genre's deep knowledge of how social inequities are perpetuated as well as its plans for how to rectify them.Kathleen Lubey is Professor of English at St. John's University. She is the author of Excitable Imaginations: Eroticism and Reading in Britain, 1660-1760 (2012).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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo) was composed around 1160 at the imperial Bavarian abbey of Tegernsee, at a critical point in the power-struggle between the papacy and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. In this new translation, Carol Symes provides the first full and faithful rendering of the play’s dynamic language, maintaining the meter, rhyme scheme, and stage directions of the Latin original and restoring the liturgical elements embedded in the text. Kyle A. Thomas, whose dedicated research provides the foundation for an analysis of the play’s broader contexts, also brings perspectives from the first fully staged modern production that tested the theatricality of the translation and provides a new historical and dramaturgical analysis of the play’s rich interpretive and performative possibilities.In this discussion, Symes and Thomas discuss the significance of the play, surprising and fascinating things they learned while working on the book, and what the Play about the Antichrist tells us about what it means to be human.Carol Symes is associate professor of history and theatre at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of an award-winning monograph on theater and public life in medieval Arras. Kyle A. Thomas is assistant professor of theatre at Missouri State University, specializing in medieval performance texts and strategies for their modern enactment.Becky Straple-Sovers is a medievalist and freelance editor who earned her Ph.D. in English at Western Michigan University in 2021. Her research interests include bodies, movement, gender, and sexuality in literature, as well as poetry of the First World War and the public humanities. She can be found on Twitter @restraple. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Yamin Levy's The Mysticism of Andalusia: Exploring HaRambam's Mystical Tradition (MHC Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking book that delves into the mystical tradition of Andalusia and specifically of Maimonides. Unlike Kabalah and the European mystical traditions, Andalusian mysticism is rooted in clear Halakhic and philosophical principles devoid of superstition and magic. This book examines Maimonides works which serve as a guide for those interested in pursuing mystical union with G-d. Topics such as prophecy, love and awe of G-d, silent meditation, the role of prophets, and the spiritual aspects of Jewish rituals are all explored in this book. The Mysticism of Andalusia offers a refreshing perspective and path forward for all who desire deep spiritual fulfillment without the rejection of the mind and self.Ohad Fedida lives in Miami and is a psychology research and clinical assistant. He is pursuing a graduate degree in psychology, and is involved in a wide array of initiatives and studies from legal philosophy, Jewish programming, and psychology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Opulent jewelled objects ranked among the most highly valued works of art in the European Middle Ages. At the same time, precious stones prompted sophisticated reflections on the power of nature and the experience of mineralized beings. Beyond a visual regime that put a premium on brilliant materiality, how can we account for the ubiquity of gems in mediaeval thought?In The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture (Penn State University Press, 2022), art historian Dr. Brigitte Buettner examines the social roles, cultural meanings, and active agency of precious stones in secular mediaeval art. Exploring the layered roles played by gems in aesthetic, ideological, intellectual, and economic practices, Dr. Buettner focuses on three significant categories of art: the jewelled crown, the pictorialized lapidary, and the illustrated travel account.The global gem trade brought coveted jewels from the Indies to goldsmiths’ workshops in Paris, fashionable bodies in London, and the crowns of kings across Europe, and Buettner shows that Europe’s literal and metaphorical enrichment was predicated on the importation of gems and ideas from Byzantium, the Islamic world, Persia, and India.Original, transhistorical, and cross-disciplinary, The Mineral and the Visual engages important methodological questions about the work of culture in its material dimension. It will be especially useful to scholars and students interested in mediaeval art history, material culture, and mediaeval history.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Robert Payne's Reimagining the Family: Lesbian Mothering in Contemporary French Literature (Peter Lang, 2021) is the first book-length study of representations of lesbian mothering in French literature. Focusing on female-authored texts published between 1970 and 2013, the book explores how literature reflects, engages with and even anticipates the recent, highly charged debates on the rights of same-sex couples and parents in France. Centered around the notion of «reimagining», the book examines how literature interrogates the normative definition of the family as a heterosexual, biological unit. It discusses a range of themes, including the difficulty of reconciling lesbianism with mothering, the role of the father, the identity of the co-mother and issues of difference and equality. The corpus includes both well-known and previously unstudied authors, and covers a range of genres, from autobiography to popular fiction. Collectively, the texts offer privileged insights into the increasingly relevant experiences of lesbian mothers and illustrate the changing face of the family in twenty-first-century France.Salvador Lopez Rivera is a PhD candidate in French language and literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Owen Stanwood's newest book, The Global Refuge: Huguenots in an Age of Empire (Oxford UP, 2019), places the history of Huguenot refugees in a global context, the first truly international history of the diaspora. In the early modern world these French Protestant exiles scattered around the world, fleeing persecution following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The story begins with dreams of Eden, as religious migrants sought to build perfect societies far from the political storms of Europe. In order to build these communities, however, the Huguenots needed patrons, forcing them to navigate the world of empires. The refugees promoted themselves as a chosen people, religious heroes who also possessed key skills that could strengthen the British and Dutch states. This embrace of empire led to a gradual assimilation. For over a century, they learned that only by blending in and by mastering foreign institutions could they prosper. While the Huguenots never managed to find a utopia or to realize their imperial sponsors' visions of profits, The Global Refuge demonstrates how this diasporic community helped shape the first age of globalization and influenced the reception of future refugee populations.Elspeth Currie is a PhD student in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women’s intellectual history in early modern Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Volume 37 of Spenser Studies is a special issue on the theme of “Companionable Thinking: Spenser With.” As guest editors of this collection of essays, Namratha Rao (University of York), Joe Moshenska (University of Oxford), and David Hillman (King’s College, University of Cambridge) collect over two dozen essays which each “make a match” between Spenser’s work and a philosopher or theorist. For instance, Melissa Sanchez stages a conversation between Spenser and the trans theorist Julia Serrano; Patrick Aaron Harris reads Spenser’s Amoretti with Sianne Ngai’s theorization of cute poetics; and Joe Moshenska and Ayesha Ramachandran look at Spenser through Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s “cannibal metaphysics.”Each essay, from Megan Bowman’s examination of “spectacular staring” in Rosemarie Garland-Thompson to Supriya Chaudhuri’s consideration of Donna Harraway, gestures toward new critical horizons for early modern studies to take up. Additionally, as the theorist’s work participates in “companionable thinking with” Spenser, the poetry of the Faerie Queene, Amoretti, and The Shepheardes Calender is shown to enrich contemporary discussions of literary theory.John Yargo is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. He earned a PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the environmental humanities and early modern culture. In 2023, his dissertation won the J. Leeds Barroll Prize, given by the Shakespeare Association of America. His peer-reviewed articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies, Early Theatre, Studies in Philology, and Shakespeare Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Heide Hausse's book The Malleable Body: Surgeons, Artisans, and Amputees in Early Modern Germany (Manchester University Press, 2023) uses amputation and prostheses to tell a new story about medicine and embodied knowledge-making in early modern Europe. It draws on the writings of craft surgeons and learned physicians to follow the heated debates that arose from changing practices of removing limbs, uncovering tense moments in which decisions to operate were made. Importantly, it teases out surgeons' ideas about the body embedded in their technical instructions. This unique study also explores the material culture of mechanical hands that amputees commissioned locksmiths, clockmakers, and other artisans to create, revealing their roles in developing a new prosthetic technology. Over two centuries of surgical and artisanal interventions emerged a growing perception, fundamental to biomedicine today, that humans could alter the body - that it was malleable.Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In Late-Colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence, Mani Sharpe peploys the term “late-colonial” to describe (mostly) French films made during, and in response to, the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). Sharpe argues that late-colonial cinema represents a formally and thematically important, yet unappreciated tendency in French cinema; one that has largely been overshadowed by a scholarly focus on the French New Wave. Sharpe contends that whilst late-colonial French cinema cannot be seen as a coherent cinematic movement, school of filmmaking, or genre, it can be seen as a coherent ethical trend, with many of the fifteen central case studies explored in Late-colonial French Cinema filtering the Algerian War of Independence through a discourse of “redemptive pacifism”.Dr. Mani Sharpe about Late-Colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence out in 2023 with Edinburgh University Press. Dr. Sharpe is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Leeds. He previously taught Film Studies at Newcastle University and La Sorbonne – Paris 3. Dr. Sharpe’s areas of expertise include: cinema and war; film studies; violence and visuality; de-colonisation; contemporary film theory; French cinema; the French New Wave; cultural studies; defacement; and the politics of the close-up. Dr. Sharpe earned his B.A. and M.A. at Leeds and his Ph.D. at Newcastle University. He is the author of several articles on late-colonial French cinema, having published in French Studies, Journal of European Studies, Journal of War and Culture Studies, and Studies in French Cinema, amongst others.Late-colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence is his first book.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies