When inspiration struck Robert McCrum to write a book about the Bard, it came while watching one of the playwright’s plays in Central Park, New York. Here, McCrum realized that we, today, are undoubtedly living in Shakespearean times. Joe Krulder, a British Historian, interviews Robert about his latest book, Shakespearean: On Life and Language in Times of Disruption (Pegasus Books, 2021) Current events such as the Covid-19 Pandemic, the election and then four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, and this twenty-first-century obsession with conspiracy theories, mirror London’s many plagues from 1592 to 1603, Shakespeare’s Caesar and Richard III, and of course our post-modern social media outlets are simply riddled with conspiracies. Shakespearean, indeed. What Shakespearean: On Life and Language in Times of Disruption accomplishes is to place the reader in William Shakespeare’s London. There is danger at Bishops Gate, the neighborhood the Bard chose to reside in; danger appeared both from below and above. Sword fights, punch ups, and stabbings demarcate a rough “from below” existence while political intrigues from the execution of the Earl of Essex to the Gun Powder Plot of 1605 imperilled all of London’s theatre productions if not William Shakespeare himself. Robert McCrum is the author of dozens of works, fiction as well as non-fiction, plus he’s an Emmy Award-winning documentarian. A long-time editor for Faber and Faber and The Observer, McCrum career continues on despite a stroke. His recovery gave him time to read and Shakespeare, once again, filled his gaze. Joe Krulder is the author of The Execution of Admiral John Byng as a Microhistory of Eighteenth-Century Britain (Routledge 2021) teaching college History in Northern California. Joe earned his doctorate at the University of Bristol in West England. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

New Books in Literary Studies

Robert McCrum, "Shakespearean: On Life and Language in Times of Disruption" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)

Eileen Hunt Botting is a Professor political science at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Botting is a widely published and cited scholar on the thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, the eighteenth-century author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. As editor of a two-volume collection, Portraits of Wollstonecraft (Bloomsbury Academic,2021), she offers primary sources of criticism, literature and representation in portraiture, from the early international reception to Wollstonecraft’s present global influence. Through well curated selections, we see Wollstonecraft in new light. From the iconic portrait painted by John Opie in 1797, to Sarah A. Underwood’s essay Heroines of Free Thought in 1876, to references by modern feminists including Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, and the artist Judy Chicago, the reader discovers the many implications of Wollstonecraft’s ideas. This two-volume collection is sure to be of interest to anyone curious about Wollstonecraft’s contribution to political philosophy, literature, and feminist thought. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her current writing project is on the intellectual history of women and the origins of feminism seen through the emblematic life and work of Simone de Beauvoir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Eileen Hunt Botting, "Portraits of Wollstonecraft" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

In her scintillating new book, The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins, Feminine Ideals (Oxford UP, 2021), Nerina Rustomji presents a fascinating and multilayered intellectual and cultural history of the category of the “Houri” and the multiple ideological projects in which it has been inserted over time and space. Nimbly moving between a vast range of discursive theaters including Western Islamophobic representations of the Houri in the post 9/11 context, early modern and modern French and English Literature, premodern Muslim intellectual traditions, and popular preachers on the internet, Rustomji shows the complexity of this category and its unavailability for a canonical definition. The Beauty of the Houri is intellectual history at its best that combines philological rigor with astute theoretical reflection. And all this Rustomji accomplishes in prose the delightfulness of which competes fiercely with its lucidity. SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His book Defending Muhammad in Modernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies 2020 Book Prize and was selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award. His other academic publications are available here. He can be reached at sherali.tareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Nerina Rustomji, "The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins and Feminine Ideals" (Oxford UP, 2021)

Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Iron Man are names that are often connected to the expansive superhero genre, including the multi-billion-dollar film and television franchises. But these characters are older and have been woven into American popular culture since their inception in the early days of comic books. The history of these comic book heroes are histories that include bulging muscles, flashy fight scenes, four-color panels, and heroic rescues of damsels in distress. Esther De Dauw’s new book, Hot Pants and Spandex Suits: Gender Representation in American Superhero Comic (Rutgers UP, 2021),analyzes these characters with a critical lens to explore what exactly these figures teach the readers and the public about identity, embodiment, and sexuality. De Dauw, a comics scholar, focuses her research on the intersectionality of race and gender in comic books. Hot Pants and Spandex Suits takes the audience through the 80-year evolution of comic books to discuss the changes in identity and culture, and explore what these heroes say about and to the American people. As an expert in Comic Studies and Cultural Studies, De Dauw uses theories of structural power relations to explain the disenfranchisement of women, LGBTQIA+, and the Black community in comics. As she notes, superheroes are often metaphors for the concerns of the dominant culture, and are informed by the dominant gender ideology and the American cultural landscape. Hot Pants and Spandex Suits unpacks superhero actions to examine who these heroes are serving, how, and what this has to say about American culture and identity. These questions frame the discussion throughout the book as De Dauw traces the changing perceptions of identity, cultural, and historical shifts through comic books and their many different heroes. A significant avenue of analysis focuses on the fragility of white masculinity, and how the superheroes essentially became an antidote to the cultural sense that white men were “losing” in American society. With a fascinating tour of the history of comic books, De Dauw welcomes both the academic community and comic-book lovers to venture through this analysis to better understand the role of superheroes within our culture and our politics. Shaina Boldt assisted with this podcast. Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Esther De Dauw, "Hot Pants and Spandex Suits: Gender Representation in American Superhero Comic" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature (Cornell UP, 2021) explores how Russian writers from the mid-1920s on have read and responded to Joyce's work. Through contextually rich close readings, José Vergara uncovers the many roles Joyce has occupied in Russia over the last century, demonstrating how the writers Yury Olesha, Vladimir Nabokov, Andrei Bitov, Sasha Sokolov, and Mikhail Shishkin draw from Joyce's texts, particularly Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, to address the volatile questions of lineages in their respective Soviet, émigré, and post-Soviet contexts. Interviews with contemporary Russian writers, critics, and readers of Joyce extend the conversation to the present day, showing how the debates regarding the Irish writer's place in the Russian pantheon are no less settled one hundred years after Ulysses. The creative reworkings, or translations, of Joycean themes, ideas, characters, plots, and styles made by the five writers Vergara examines speak to shifting cultural norms, understandings of intertextuality, and the polarity between Russia and the West. Vergara illuminates how Russian writers have used Joyce's ideas as a critical lens to shape, prod, and constantly redefine their own place in literary history. All Future Plunges to the Past offers one overarching approach to the general narrative of Joyce's reception in Russian literature. While each of the writers examined responded to Joyce in an individual manner, the sum of their methods reveals common concerns. This subject raises the issue of cultural values and, more importantly, how they changed throughout the twentieth century in the Soviet Union, Russian emigration, and the post-Soviet Russian environment. José Vergara is Assistant Professor of Russian at Bryn Mawr College.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

José Vergara, "All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature" (Cornell UP, 2021)

Counting Dreams: The Life and Writings of the Loyalist Nun Nomura Bōtō (Cornell UP, 2021) tells the story of Nomura Bōtō, a Buddhist nun, writer, poet, and activist who joined the movement to oppose the Tokugawa Shogunate and restore imperial rule. Banished for her political activities, Bōtō was imprisoned on a remote island until her comrades rescued her in a dramatic jailbreak, spiriting her away under gunfire. Roger K. Thomas examines Bōtō's life, writing, and legacy, and provides annotated translations of two of her literary diaries, shedding light on life and society in Japan's tumultuous bakumatsu period and challenging preconceptions about women's roles in the era. Thomas interweaves analysis of Bōtō's poetry and diaries with the history of her life and activism, examining their interrelationship and revealing how she brought two worlds—the poetic and the political—together. Counting Dreams illustrates Bōtō's significant role in the loyalist movement, depicting the adventurous life of a complex woman in Japan on the cusp of the Meiji Restoration. Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Roger K. Thomas, "Counting Dreams: The Life and Writings of the Loyalist Nun Nomura Bōtō" (Cornell UP, 2021)

Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847-1870 (UP of Mississippi, 2021) enters deep into an era of comic history that has been entirely neglected. This buried cache of mid-Victorian graphic humor is marvelously rich in pictorial narratives of all kinds. Author David Kunzle calls this period a "rebirth" because of the preceding long hiatus in use of the new genre, since the Great Age of Caricature (c.1780-c.1820) when the comic strip was practiced as a sideline. Suddenly in 1847, a new, post-Töpffer comic strip sparks to life in Britain, mostly in periodicals, and especially in Punch, where all the best artists of the period participated, if only sporadically: Richard Doyle, John Tenniel, John Leech, Charles Keene, and George Du Maurier. Until now, this aspect of the extensive oeuvre of the well-known masters of the new journal cartoon in Punch has been almost completely ignored. Exceptionally, George Cruikshank revived just once in The Bottle, independently, the whole serious, contrasting Hogarthian picture story. Numerous comic strips and picture stories appeared in periodicals other than Punch by artists who were likewise largely ignored. Like the Punch luminaries, they adopt in semirealistic style sociopolitical subject matter easily accessible to their (lower-)middle-class readership. The topics covered in and out of Punch by these strips and graphic novels range from French enemies King Louis-Philippe and Emperor Napoleon III to farcical treatment of major historical events: the Bayeux tapestry (1848), the Great Exhibition of 1851, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Artists explore a great variety of social types, occupations, and situations such as the emigrant, the tourist, fox hunting and Indian big game hunting, dueling, the forlorn lover, the student, the artist, the toothache, the burglar, the paramilitary volunteer, Darwinian animal metamorphoses, and even nightmares. In Rebirth of the English Comic Strip, Kunzle analyzes these much-neglected works down to the precocious modernist and absurdist scribbles of Marie Duval, Europe's first female professional cartoonist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

David Kunzle, "Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847-1870" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

Muslim South Asia is widely characterized as a culture that idealizes female anonymity: women's bodies are veiled and their voices silenced. Challenging these perceptions, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, University of Sheffield, highlights an elusive strand of autobiographical writing dating back several centuries that offers a new lens through which to study notions of selfhood. In Elusive Lives: Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2018), she locates the voices of Muslim women who rejected taboos against women speaking out, by telling their life stories in written autobiography.  To chart patterns across time and space, materials dated from the sixteenth century to the present are drawn from across South Asia – including present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Lambert-Hurley uses many rare autobiographical texts in a wide array of languages to elaborate a theoretical model for gender, autobiography, and the self beyond the usual Euro-American frame. In doing so, she works toward a new, globalized history of the field. Ultimately, Elusive Lives points to the sheer diversity of Muslim women's lives and life stories, offering a unique window into a history of the everyday against a backdrop of imperialism, reformism, nationalism and feminism. In our conversation we discuss autobiographical writing, travelogues, letters, diaries, interviews, low literacy rates, the social and physical geographies of authors, reasons Muslim women narrated their life, the role of editors, translators, on publishers, intended and unintended audiences, the actress Begum Khurshid Mirza, and gender difference across autobiographies. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, "Elusive Lives: Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia" (Stanford UP, 2018)

What is a memoir? What makes a memoir both nonfictional and literary? What are the memoirist’s moral obligations to the people they write about besides themselves, and to their potential readers? And is the writing of a memoir just indulging in narcissism, or revenge?  In Artful Truths: The Philosophy of Memoir (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Helena De Bres examines the philosophical issues that the memoir genre raises, given the doubts we may have about whether people can write the truth about themselves, whether the demands of literature overwhelm the demands of truth-telling, and even whether there is such a thing as a unified, persisting self to write about. De Bres, who is an associate professor of philosophy at Wellesley College, defends the nonfiction status of memoir while acknowledging that memories fail, we often engage in self-justification, and it can be difficult to draw a line between the “experiential truth” the memoirist tries to capture and falsity. De Bres deftly navigates issues in metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics in this highly readable examination of an evolving literary form. Carrie Figdor is professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Helena de Bres, "Artful Truths: The Philosophy of Memoir" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

The Rādhā Tantra is an anonymous 17th-century tantric text from Bengal. Mans Broo's The Rādhā Tantra: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation (Routledge, 2019) offers a lively picture of the meeting of different religious traditions in 17th century Bengal, since it presents a Śākta version of the famous Vaiṣṇava story of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. This book presents a critically edited text of the Rādhā Tantra, based on manuscripts in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, as well as an annotated translation It is prefaced by an introduction that situates the text in its social and historical context and discusses its significance.  Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Mans Broo, "The Rādhā Tantra: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation" (Routledge, 2019)

Pieter Vanhove’s World Literature After Empire: Rethinking Universality in the Long Cold War (2021), engages with the idea of ‘world’ as it manifests in literary and philosophical studies. Taking an interdisciplinary and multilingual approach, Vanhove centers his discussion on literature and the arts, while drawing an important historical tableau of the Cold War that highlights the ways in which decolonization processes facilitated a multiplicity of ways to think of the ‘world’. His book engages at length with debates on world literature, postcolonial thought, and translation. In order to show the complex political and cultural tapestry of the Cold War, Vanhove engages in case studies on China and the Afro-Asian Writer’s Bureau, Alberto Moravia and PEN International, Antonio Gramsci and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Paul Sartre and Patrice Lulumba, André Malraux, and Huang Yong Ping. In so doing, the Vanhove demonstrates how artists during the Cold War engaged in cultural discourse that was anti-imperialist, and whose questions centered on issues of race, sexuality, gender, and class. Vanhove’s book argues for a process of deconstruction of the Eurocentric conception of the world, for a closer engagement with conceptions of the world in various contexts during the Cold War, and ultimately for using tools of deconstruction to “do justice to the untranslatability of cultural artifacts that call into question the logic of universalization.” Pieter Vanhove is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Lancaster University. He holds a PhD in Italian and Comparative Literature from Columnia University. Vanhove’s publications include articles in Critical Asian Studies, estetica: studi e ricerche, Senses of Cinema, and Studi pasoliniani. Eralda Lameborshi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University Commerce. Her areas of research include world literature and cinema, Southeast European studies, Ottoman studies, postcolonial theory, and the global novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Pieter Vanhove, "World Literature After Empire: Rethinking Universality in the Long Cold War" (Routledge, 2021)

Interviews with Scholars of Literature about their New Books

hubhopper

New Books in Literary Studies

hubhopper