New Books in Literary Studies

In Deep Time: A Literary History (Princeton UP, 2023), Noah Heringman, Curators’ Professor of English at the University of Missouri, presents a “counter-history” of deep time. This counter-history acknowledges and investigates the literary and imaginary origins of the idea of deep time, from eighteen-century narratives of voyages around the world to William Blake’s ballads and writings by Charles Darwin. This approach to the idea of deep time and the history of its formation engages with contemporary debates over the concept of an “Anthropocene” and the more general problem of sequencing and understanding the Earth’s time. The book’s main contribution is to show that the idea of deep time is not exclusively a scientific and geologic concept. In order to be properly understood and responsibly used, this idea needs to be approached as “a field of imagination,” which has been shaped by the entangled histories of exploration, colonialism, natural sciences, archeology, and literary forms. Deep Time is both a surprising exploration of the forms that “the fantasy of a legible earth history” took between the eighteen and the nineteenth centuries and an invitation to reflect on how these forms might have left their marks on our current attempts at framing the depth and strangeness of the Earth’s time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Poet Laureate of Kentucky Crystal Wilkinson’s food memoir, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks (Clarkson Potter, 2023), honors her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black Appalachian women. She contends, “The concept of the kitchen ghost came to me years ago, when I realized that my ancestors are always with me and that the women are most present while I’m chopping or stirring or standing at the stove.” Wilkinson shares nearly forty family recipes like Corn Pudding, Chicken and Dumplings, and Granny Christine’s Jam Cake, with stories and family photos to bring to life the rich heritage of Black Appalachia.Dr. N’Kosi Oates is a curator. He earned his Ph.D. in Africana Studies at Brown University. Find him on Twitter at DrNKosiOates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) by Dr. Heather Murray is a cultural and intellectual history of people with mental illnesses in the twentieth-century United States. While acknowledging the fraught, and often violent, histories of American psychiatric hospitals, Heather Murray also suggests that it is in these hospitals that patients became more intense observers: they gave more conscious consideration to institutional and broader kinds of citizenship, to the nature and needs of communities versus those of individuals, to scientific modernity, and to human rights and solidarities among the suffering. All of these ideas have animated twentieth-century America, and, as Dr. Murray shows, have not just flowed into psychiatric hospitals but outward from them as well. These themes are especially clear within patients' intimate, creative, and political correspondence, writings, and drawings, as well as in hospital publications and films.This way of thinking and imagining contrasts with more common images of the patient—as passive, resigned, and absented from the world in the cloistered setting of the hospital—that have animated psychiatry over the course of the twentieth century. Asylum Ways of Seeing traces how it is that patient resignation went from being interpreted as wisdom in the early twentieth century, to being understood as a capitulation in scientific and political sources by mid-century, to being seen as a profound violation of selfhood and individual rights by the century's end. In so doing, it makes a call to reconsider the philosophical possibilities within resignation. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Toward the end of the twentieth century, an unprecedented surge of writing altered the Israeli literary scene in profound ways. As fresh creative voices and multiple languages vied for recognition, diversity replaced consensus. Genres once accorded lower status—such as the graphic novel and science fiction—gained readership and positive critical notice. These trends ushered in not only the discovery and recovery of literary works but also a major rethinking of literary history. In Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making (SUNY Press, 2020), scholars consider how recent voices have succeeded older ones and reverberated in concert with them; how linguistic and geographical boundaries have blurred; how genres have shifted; and how canon and competition have shaped Israeli culture. Charting surprising trajectories of a vibrant, challenging, and dynamic literature, the contributors analyze texts composed in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Arabic; by Jews and non-Jews; and by Israelis abroad as well as writers in Israel. What emerges is a portrait of Israeli literature as neither minor nor regional, but rather as transnational, multilingual, and worthy of international attention.Nancy E. Berg is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Her previous books include Exile from Exile: Israeli Writers from Iraq,, also published by SUNY Press. Naomi B. Sokoloff is Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington. Her previous books include Imagining the Child in Modern Jewish Fiction. Together, Berg and Sokoloff are the coeditors of What We Talk about When We Talk about Hebrew (and What It Means to Americans), winner of the National Jewish Book Award for anthologies and collections. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Sara J. Charles, an author specializing in medieval manuscript production, dives into the fascinating world of scriptoria. She unpacks the spiritual and philosophical aspects of scribes' work and challenges common misconceptions. Listeners learn about the intricate relationship between the rise of Christianity and manuscript creation in post-Roman Europe. Charles also highlights the dynamic environment of medieval scriptoria, revealing a bustling community effort behind each manuscript, and discusses the impact of the printing press on this age-old craft.

Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660 (Oxford University Press, 2023) argues that dramatic narratives about monarchy and succession codified speculative futures in the early modern English cultural imaginary. This book considers chronicle plays—plays written for the public stage and play pamphlets composed when the playhouses were closed during the civil wars—in order to examine the formal and material ways that playwrights imagined futures in dramatic works that were purportedly about the past.Through close readings of William Shakespeare's 1&2 Henry IV, Richard III, Shakespeare's and John Fletcher's All is True, Samuel Rowley's When You See Me, You Know Me, John Ford's Perkin Warbeck, and the anonymous play pamphlets The Leveller's Levelled, 1 & 2 Craftie Cromwell, Charles I, and Cromwell's Conspiracy, Dr. Marissa Nicosia shows that imaginative treatments of history in plays that are usually associated with the past also had purchase on the future. While plays about the nation's past retell history, these plays are not restricted by their subject matter to merely document what happened: Playwrights projected possible futures in their accounts of verifiable historical events.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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In an era where the financial stability of many arts organizations is increasingly precarious, arts philanthropy stands at a critical juncture. The recent COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21 laid bare the vulnerabilities in existing funding structures, highlighting just how fragile these lifelines can be. Coupled with a surge in social initiatives that demand attention and resources, the way the arts are funded is undergoing scrutiny and transformation.A new wave of philanthropists—individuals with fresh motivations and evolving priorities—has emerged. These next-gen donors continue the legacy of their predecessors, while actively reshaping it, bringing forth new perspectives and expectations. Their influence is profound but necessitates a balance of caution and optimism as the arts sector navigates this changing landscape.This is where Philanthropy in the Arts: A Game of Give and Take (Lund Humphries, 2023) steps in, offering a sprawling yet incisive exploration of philanthropy in the arts. The book examines the interests and behaviors of donors and recipients, suggesting ways in which their practices can be better intertwined. Through open and wide-ranging discussions, it explores the intricacies of giving and receiving in the arts, shedding light on the unique challenges and opportunities that define this relationship.For collectors, philanthropists, and patrons, this book is more than just analysis—it’s a handy guide that equips them with the knowledge to navigate the peculiarities of arts philanthropy. For art market and museum professionals, it provides insights into the evolving dynamics of donor relationships, helping them adapt to the rapidly changing environment. Amidst the increasing financial instability of numerous arts organizations, arts philanthropy finds itself at a critical juncture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In this episode, I speak with Marc Redfield, professor of Comparative Literature, English, and German Studies at Brown University about his most recent work, Shibboleth: Judges, Derrida, Celan, published in 2020 by Fordham University Press. In this short but intricate and dense work, Redfield investigates the “shibboleth”—the word, if it is one, and the concept—from its roots in the Book of Judges to the contemporary global regimes of technics that are defined by constantly proliferating technologies and practices of encryption, decryption, exclusion, and inclusion. At the heart of this book is an insightful interpretation of two poems by the Romanian-Jewish, German-language poet Paul Celan. Redfield places Celan into a polyphonic dialogue with others who invoked “the” shibboleth: the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, William Faulkner, and the Colombian visual artist Doris Salcedo (whose 2007 installation at the Tate Modern, which bears the title Shibboleth, provides the cover image for the book). In doing so, Redfield pursues the track of shibboleth: a word to which no language can properly lay claim, a word that is both less and more than a word, that signifies both the epitome and ruin of border control technology, and that thus, despite its violent origin and role in the Biblical story, offers a locus of poetico-political affirmation.Britt Edelen is a Ph.D. student in English at Duke University. He focuses on modernism and the relationship(s) between language, philosophy, and literature. You can find him on Twitter or send him an email. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

"In this tango palace everything was swaying rhythmically to and fro, bodies of men and women, beams of colored light, brilliant wine glasses, red and green liquids, slender fingers, pomegranate-colored lips, and feverish eyes. Tables and chairs, together with the crowd of people, cast their reflections on the center of the shiny floor. Everyone was under a powerful magical spell and lost in this enchanted palace." Enigmatic, mesmerizing, and frenetic, Urban Scenes (Cambria, 2023) takes readers into the dazzling world of Shanghai in the 1920s. This collection of short fiction by Liu Na’ou (1905–1940) — a Taiwanese-born modernist writer — contains stories that take place in cinemas, art studios, and nightclubs. Touching on issues of modernity, social change, and shifting ideas of love, romance, and beauty, these tantalizing stories are accompanied by a thoughtful Introduction and helpful notes by the translators, Yaohua Shi and Judith Amory. This collection is sure to appeal to those interested in modernist literature and Sinophone fiction, as well as anyone who is looking for stories that feature perplexing narrators to analyze with their students. Interested readers should also check out the other titles in the Cambria Sinophone Translation Series.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In The People of the Ruins (originally published in 1920), Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neo mediaeval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Jeremy Tuft is a physics instructor and former artillery officer who is cryogenically frozen in his laboratory only to emerge after a century and a half to a disquieting new era. Though at first Tuft is disconcerted by the failure of his own era's smug doctrine of Progress, he eventually decides that he prefers the post civilised life. But, when the northern English and Welsh tribes invade, Tuft must set about reinventing weapons of mass destruction.One of the most critically acclaimed and popular postwar stories of its day, The People of the Ruins captured a feeling that was common among those who had fought and survived the Great War: haunted by trauma and guilt, its protagonist feels out of time and out of place, unsure of what is real or unreal. Shanks implies in this seminal work, as Dr. Paul March-Russell explains in the book's introduction, that the political system was already corrupt before the story began, and that Bolshevism and anarchism—and the resulting civil wars—merely accelerated the world's inevitable decline.A satire of Wellsian techno-utopian novels, The People of the Ruins is a bold, entertaining, and moving postapocalyptic novel contemporary readers won't soon forget.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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies