New Books in Literary Studies

Analyzing the way that recent works of graphic narrative use the comics form to engage with the “problem” of reproduction, Shiamin Kwa’s Perfect Copies: Reproduction and the Contemporary Comic (Rutgers UP, 2023) reminds us that the mode of production and the manner in which we perceive comics are often quite similar to the stories they tell. Perfect Copies considers the dual notions of reproduction, mechanical as well as biological, and explores how comics are works of reproduction that embed questions about the nature of reproduction itself. Through close readings of the comics My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, The Black Project by Gareth Brookes, The Generous Bosom series by Conor Stechschulte, Sabrina by Nick Drnaso, and Panther by Brecht Evens, Perfect Copies shows how these comics makers push the limits of different ideas of “reproduction” in strikingly different ways. Kwa suggests that reading and thinking about books like these, that push us to engage with these complicated questions, teaches us how to become better readers.Dr. Shiamin Kwa is Chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature at Bryn Mawr College. Her written work explores relationships between form and content, text and image, self and self-presentation, surface and depth, and the conflicts between what we say and what we mean. Her research interests include theater and fiction, food studies, graphic narratives, literary studies, cultural studies, comparative and world literature, and literary and narrative theory. Her published articles analyze a broad variety of topics, including Italian opera, contemporary Chinese literature, and North American and European graphic narratives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In Ways of Seeking: The Arabic Novel and the Poetics of Investigation (U California Press, 2024), Emily Drumsta traces the influence of detective fiction on the twentieth-century Arabic novel. Theorizing a “poetics of investigation,” she shows how these novels, far from staging awe-inspiring feats of logical deduction, mock the truth-seeking practices on which modern exercises of colonial and national power are often premised. Their narratives return to the archives of Arabic folklore, Islamic piety, and mysticism to explore less coercive ways of knowing, seeing, and seeking. Drumsta argues that scholars of the Middle East neglect the literary at their peril, overlooking key critiques of colonialism from the intellectuals who shaped and responded through fiction to the transformations of modernity. This book ultimately tells a different story about the novel’s place in the constellation of Arab modernism, modeling an innovative method of open-ended inquiry based on the literary texts themselves.Emily Drumsta is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She is editor and translator of Revolt Against the Sun: Selected Poetry of Nazik al-MalaʼikaTugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Following Art Spiegelman's declaration that 'the future of comics is in the past,' Drawing from the Archives considers comics memory in the contemporary North American graphic novel. Cartoonists such as Chris Ware, Seth, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and others have not only produced some of the most important graphic novels, they have also turned to the history of comics as a common visual heritage to pass on to new readers. This book is a full-length study of contemporary cartoonists when they are at work as historians: it offers a detailed description of how they draw from the archives of comics history, examining the different gestures of collecting, curating, reprinting, forging, swiping, and undrawing that give shape to their engagement with the past. In recognizing these different acts of transmission, this book argues for a material and vernacular history of how comics are remembered, shared, and recirculated over time.Dr. Benoît Crucifix is assistant professor of Cultural Studies at KU Leuven and researcher at the Royal Library of Belgium, working on the FED-tWIN “Pop Heritage” project. The aim of the project is to valorize collections of popular print culture. He is interested in the cultural practices that move and reframe existing comics in a variety of contexts and settings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

During the Middle Ages, the Iberian Peninsula was home not to Spain and Portugal but rather to al-Andalus. Ruled by a succession of Islamic dynasties, al-Andalus came to be a shorthand for a legendary place where people from the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe; Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace. That reputation is not entirely deserved, yet, as On Earth Or in Poems: The Many Lives of Al-Andalus (Harvard UP, 2023) shows, it has had an enduring hold on the imagination, especially for Arab and Muslim artists and thinkers in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.From the vast and complex story behind the name al-Andalus, Syrians and North Africans draw their own connections to history’s ruling dynasties. Palestinians can imagine themselves as “Moriscos,” descended from Spanish Muslims forced to hide their identities. A Palestinian flamenco musician in Chicago, no less than a Saudi women’s rights activist, can take inspiration from al-Andalus. These diverse relationships to the same past may be imagined, but the present-day communities and future visions those relationships foster are real.Where do these notions of al-Andalus come from? How do they translate into aspiration and action? Eric Calderwood traces the role of al-Andalus in music and in debates about Arab and Berber identities, Arab and Muslim feminisms, the politics of Palestine and Israel, and immigration and multiculturalism in Europe. The Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish once asked, “Was al-Andalus / Here or there? On earth … or in poems?” The artists and activists showcased in this book answer: it was there, it is here, and it will be.Eric Calderwood is Associate Professor of Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the author of the award-winning Colonial al-Andalus. He is a contributor to NPR, the BBC, and Foreign Policy.Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

When I decided to try my hand at interviewing authors for the New Books Network, one of my dream guests was Steve Mentz. Steve’s work in the environmental humanities marries a rigorous archival work, pathbreaking close readings, and a fluent and innovative approach to scholarly writing. I think he’s charted a course for early modern ecocriticism that has been both impressive and energizing.Steve Mentz is a Professor of English at St. John’s University. He has produced numerous books that have shaped the emerging field of the blue humanities, including Shipwreck Modernity; At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean; the Bloomsbury Objects entry Ocean; and the recent An Introduction to the Blue Humanities. He has published a chapbook of poetry, Swim Poems. His Bookfish blog is also a wonderful index for scholarly and creative work happening right now. Today, I am excited to discuss his most recent book of blue poetry, Sailing Without Ahab, just published by Fordham University Press in 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Although we often think of friendship today as an indisputable value of human social life, for thinkers and writers across late mediaeval Christian society friendship raised a number of social and ethical dilemmas that needed to be carefully negotiated. On Amistà: Negotiating Friendship in Dante’s Italy (University of Toronto Press, 2023) analyses these dilemmas and looks at how Dante’s strategic articulations of friendship evolved across the phases of his literary career as he manoeuvred between different social groups and settings.Dr. Elizabeth Coggeshall reveals that friendship was not an unequivocal moral good for the writers of late mediaeval Italy. Instead, it was an ambiguous term to be deployed strategically, describing a wide range of social relationships such as allies, collaborators, servants, patrons, rivals, and enemies. Drawing on the use of the language of friendship in the letters, correspondence poems, dedications, narratives, and treatises composed by Dante and his interlocutors, Dr. Coggeshall examines the way they skillfully negotiated around the dilemmas that friendship raised in the spheres of mediaeval Italian literary society. The book addresses instances of inclusivity and exclusivity, collaboration and self-interest, hierarchy and equality, and alterity and identity. Employing literary, historical, and sociological analysis, On Amistà presents a genealogy for the innovative and tactical use of the terms of friendship among the works of late mediaeval Italian authors.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming 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

Recent decades have seen an unprecedented number of comics by and about Muslim people enter the global market. Now, Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing (Ohio State UP, 2023) offers the first major study of these works. Esra Mirze Santesso assesses Muslim comics to illustrate the multifaceted nature of seeing and representing daily lives within and outside of the homeland. Focusing on contemporary graphic narratives that are primarily but not exclusively from the Middle East--from blockbusters like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis to more local efforts such as Leila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi--Santesso explores why the graphic form has become a popular and useful medium for articulating Muslim subjectivities. Further, she shows how Muslim comics "bear witness" to a range of faith-based positions that complicate discussions of global ummah or community, contest monolithic depictions of Muslims, and question the Islamist valorization of the shaheed, the "martyr" figure regarded as the ideal religious witness. By presenting varied depictions of everyday lives of Muslims navigating violence and militarization, this book reveals the connections between religious rituals and existence in warscapes and invites us to more deeply consider the nature of witnessing itself.Dr. Esra Santesso received her B.A. from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey, and her PhD from the University of Nevada. She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia. She specializes in postcolonial theory and literature with an emphasis on Muslim identity, diasporic and immigrant experiences, and human rights narratives. Her first book, Disorientation: Muslim Identity in Contemporary Anglophone Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) investigates the extent to which the questions and theories of postcolonial identity can be applied to Muslim subjects living in the West. She is the co-editor of Islam and Postcolonial Literature (Routledge, 2017), which offers a collection of essays on religion’s role in self-representation explored via film, theater, poetry, visual arts, performance pieces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Glynne Walley, translator of classic Japanese novel Hakkenden, joins us on the podcast again to talk about his second translated volume: Hakkenden, Part 2: His Master’s Blade (Cornell East Asia Series: 2024).Unlike Part 1—which is all preamble!—in Part 2 we meet some of the fabled eight dog warriors and the Confucian virtues they represent: Shino, for filial piety; Gakuzo, for duty; Dosetsu, for loyalty. There’s betrayal, drama…and a lot of secret, intertwined family relationships.Glynne Walley is an Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Oregon and author of Good Dogs: Edification, Entertainment & Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi hakkenden (Cornell East Asia Series, 2017), the first monograph-length study of Hakkenden, a landmark of premodern Japanese fiction.Today, Glynne and I talk about Part 2, how the novel connected to readers at the time—and how Hakkenden ends up being a lot like our Marvel Cinematic Universe.Catch our first interview with Glynne on Part 1 here!You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. 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, Elizabeth talks with Steven Gonzalez, anthropologist and author of speculative fiction under the pen name E.G. Condé. They discuss the entanglement of politics, Taíno animism, and weather events in the form of a hurricane named Teddy. Steve describes the suffusion of sound he has experienced in Puerto Rico and the soundlessness at the heart of hurricanes, and tells us about his academic work on data centers, and a collaborative speculative film that imagines a world without clouds.Steve and Elizabeth reflect on current shifts within anthropology that are opening the discipline to other modes of expression, including speculative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, in the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin (the subject of a recent episode and of John's recent book Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea: My Reading) and of Arkady Martine, Byzantine historian and author of A Memory called Empire, and A Desolation Called Peace. As her Recallable Book, Elizabeth offers an anthropological space opera, The Expanse.Mentioned in the episode: "World without Clouds" by Jia Hui Lee, Luísa Reis Castro, Julianne Yip, Steven Gonzalez, and Gabrielle Robbins. Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico City by Vera S. Candiani. Haraway, Donna. "Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective 1." In Women, science, and technology, pp. 455-472. Routledge, 2013. Marcus, George E. "On the unbearable slowness of being an anthropologist now: Notes on a contemporary anxiety in the making of ethnography." Cross Cultural Poetics 12, no. 12 (2003): 7-20. Read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we discuss Netflix’s new screen adaptation of Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin’s Three Body trilogy. We discuss the battle between the eye and the idea in film and television science fiction, and whether the new show strikes a successful balance. We consider some of the challenges involved in adapting this distinctively Chinese literary work for a non-Chinese audience, and what might have been lost in doing so. And we think more broadly about the genre of hard science fiction: to whom does it appeal and what is it trying to accomplish? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies