The 3 Best New Books in Literary Studies Podcast Episodes
1) Anaïs Maurer, "The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors and Climate Activists" (Duke UP, 2023)
Bombarded with the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb a day for half a century, Pacific people have long been subjected to man-made cataclysm. Well before climate change became a global concern, nuclear...Show More
2) Elizabeth DeLoughrey, "Allegories of the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019)
While the mainstream discourses on global warming characterize it as an unprecedented catastrophe that unites the globe in a common challenge, Elizabeth DeLoughrey argues that this apparently cosmopol...Show More
3) Helen Sword, "Writing with Pleasure" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Listen to this interview of Helen Sword, professor emerita in the School of Humanities and the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the University of Auckland, founder of WriteSPACE, an intern...Show More
4) Nick Katsiadas and Carl Sell eds., "Tolkien's Medievalism in Ruins: The Function of Relics and Ruins in Middle-earth" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
The structural and symbolic purposes of ruins in literary texts have a long history, yet few scholars explore their importance within J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. From the ruins of Erebor and the r...Show More
5) Todd McGowan, "The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The difficulty of Jacques Lacan's thought is notorious. The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan cuts through this difficulty to provide a clear, jargon-free approach to understanding it. The book ...Show More
6) Carol Atack, "Plato: A Civic Life" (Reaktion, 2025)
Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born during a war that would lead to Athens’ decline, P...Show More
7) Vanessa Warne, "By Touch Alone: Blindness and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Culture" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
By Touch Alone: Blindness and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Culture (U Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Vanessa Warne demonstrates how reading by touch not only changed the lives of nineteenth-century bli...Show More
8) Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz and Sara Garbagnoli "La Pensée Wittig: Une Introduction" (Payot, 2025)
How is it possible to be a subject when faced with oppression? The revolutionary thought and work of French novelist and lesbian thinker Monique Wittig are today in dialogue with feminist and LGBTQIA+...Show More
9) Robert Waxler and David Beckman, "You Say, I Say: Staying Alive with Literature, Language, and Friendship" (Rivertown Books, 2025)
In a world increasingly dominated by visual and electronic noise, Robert Waxler and David Beckman's You Say, I Say: Staying Alive with Literature, Language, and Friendship (Rivertown Books, 2025) capt...Show More
10) Julia Rensing, "Troubling Archives: History and Memory in Namibian Literature and Art" (Transcript Publishing, 2025)
Namibia’s colonial history casts a long shadow over the country’s present. Contemporary authors and artists confront the legacies of German and South African colonial rule and engage creatively with t...Show More