New Books in 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

Ayn Rand is a provocative and polarizing figure. Strongly pro-capitalist and anti-communist, Rand was a dogmatic preacher of her moral philosophy. Based on what she called "rational self-interest", Rand believed in prosperity-seeking individualism above all. Alexandra Popoff's deeply researched biography traces Rand's journey from her early life as a privileged secular Jew in pre-revolution St. Petersburg, through the deprivations of life in Crimea during the Russian Civil War, and across the world to a new life in the United States in the 1920s. These early experiences influenced Rand's views, which she expressed in her sharp critique of Soviet Russia in her first major novel, We The Living.In Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success (Yale UP, 2024) We follow Rand's extraordinary career in early Hollywood as an apprentice scriptwriter with Cecil DeMille and her evolution into an accomplished novelist of tightly plotted, intellectual stories. Her strong promotion of laissez-fair capitalism and creative, high achieving "supermen" willing to risk everything to achieve their goals came through in her two best selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Following her literary career Rand focused on her philosophical theory of Objectivism and became a cult-like figure to many of her devoted followers. Video: Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand from 1959. Recommended reading: Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In his compelling evaluation of Cold War popular culture, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (Cambridge UP, 2020), Gregory Daddis explores how men's adventure magazines helped shape the attitudes of young, working-class Americans, the same men who fought and served in the long and bitter war in Vietnam. The 'macho pulps' - boasting titles like Man's Conquest, Battle Cry, and Adventure Life - portrayed men courageously defeating their enemies in battle, while women were reduced to sexual objects, either trivialized as erotic trophies or depicted as sexualized villains using their bodies to prey on unsuspecting, innocent men. The result was the crafting and dissemination of a particular version of martial masculinity that helped establish GIs' expectations and perceptions of war in Vietnam. By examining the role that popular culture can play in normalizing wartime sexual violence and challenging readers to consider how American society should move beyond pulp conceptions of 'normal' male behavior, Daddis convincingly argues that how we construct popular tales of masculinity matters in both peace and war.Rebekah Buchanan is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines the role of narrative–both analog and digital–in people’s lives. She is interested in how personal narratives produced in alternative spaces create sites that challenge traditionally accepted public narratives. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. You can find more about her on her website, follow her on Twitter @rj_buchanan or email her at rj-buchanan@wiu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

With My Gothic Dissertation, University of Iowa PhD Anna M. Williams has transformed the dreary diss into a This American Life-style podcast. Williams’ witty writing and compelling audio production allow her the double move of making a critical intervention into the study of the gothic novel, while also making an entertaining and thought-provoking series for non-experts. Williams uses famed novels by authors such as Anne Radcliffe and Mary Shelly as an entry point for a critique of graduate school itself—a Medieval institution of shadowy corners, arcane rituals, and a feudal power structure. The result is a first-of-its-kind work that serves as a model for doing literary scholarship in sound. This episode of Phantom Power offers you an exclusive preview of My Gothic Dissertation. First, Mack Hagood interviews Williams about creating the project, then we listen to a full chapter—a unique reading of Frankenstein that explores how the university tradition can restrict access to knowledge even as it tries to produce knowledge. You can learn more about Anna M. Williams and her work at her website. This episode features music from Neil Parsons’ 8-Bit Bach Reloaded.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Is Orwell still relevant today? In Orwell’s Ghosts Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century (Norton, 2024), Laura Beers, a Professor of History at American University examines the life and writing of Orwell to offer lessons for contemporary politics and society. The book examines the influences that shaped Eric Blair’s nom de plume, as well as showing how his ideas offer vital insights for the project of equality and social justice today. The book is even handed in its analysis, placing Orwell as a writer and thinker of his time and place, as much as he is relevant today. Moreover, the book offers an important critical perspective on his views about gender and feminism, reminding the reader of the importance of a nuanced perspective even for this hugely significant figure. A fascinating read as well as a vital political intervention, the book will be essential reading across humanities, social science and for anyone interested in politics too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Traces of Enayat (Transit Books, 2023) is a work of creative nonfiction tracing the mysterious life and erasure of Egyptian literature’s tragic heroine. It begins in Cairo, 1963. Four years before her lone novel is finally published, the writer Enayat al-Zayyat takes her own life at age 27. For the next three decades, it’s as if Enayat never existed at all. Years later, when celebrated Egyptian poet Iman Mersal stumbles upon Enayat’s long-forgotten Love and Silence in a Cairo book stall, she embarks on a journey of reflection and rediscovery that leads her ever closer to the world and work of Enayat al-Zayyat. In this biographical detective story, Mersal retraces Enayat's life and afterlife though interviews with family members and friend, even tracking down the apartments, schools, and sanatoriums where Enayat spent her days. As Mersal maps two simultaneous psychogeographies--from the glamor of golden-age Egyptian cinema to the Cairo of Mersal’s own past--a remarkable portrait emerges of two women striving to live on their own terms. With Traces of Enayat, Iman Mersal embraces the reciprocal relationship between a text and its reader, between past and present, between author and subject. First published in Arabic in 2019, this English edition was translated by Robin Moger and published by Transit Books in 2024.Iman Mersal is the author of five books of poems and a collection of essays, How to Mend: Motherhood and Its Ghosts. In English translation, her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, and other publications. Her most recent prose work, Traces of Enayat, received the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Literature in 2021. She is a professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Alberta, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Hollywood is haunted by the ghost of playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde. Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and the American Movies (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Kate Hext is the story of his haunting, told for the first time. Set within the rich evolving context of how the American entertainment industry became cinema, and how cinema become the movies, it reveals how Wilde helped to shape Hollywood in the early twentieth century.It begins with his 1882 American tour, and traces the ongoing popularity of his plays and novel in the early twentieth century, after his ignominious death. Following the early filmmakers, writers and actors as they headed West in the Hollywood boom, it uncovers how and why they took Wilde's spirit with them. There, in Hollywood, in the early days of silent cinema, Wilde's works were adapted. They were also beginning to define a new kind of style -- a 'Wilde-ish spirit', as Ernst Lubitsch called it -- filtering into the imaginations of Lubitsch himself, as well as Alla Nazimova, Ben Hecht, Samuel Hoffenstein and many others. These were the people who translated Wilde's queer playfulness into the creation of screwball comedies, gangster movies, B-movie horrors, and films noir.Wilde and his style embodied a spirit of rebellion and naughtiness, providing a blue-print for the charismatic cinematic criminal and screwball talk onscreen. Wilde in the Dream Factory revises how we understand both Wilde's afterlife and cinema's beginnings.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