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) Richard Schoch, "Shakespeare’s House: A Window onto his Life and Legacy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
In the wide realm of Shakespeare worship, the house in Stratford-upon-Avon where William Shakespeare was born in 1564 – known colloquially as the 'Birthplace' – remains the chief shrine. It's not as r...Show More
5) Helen Garner Hacking Away at the Adverbs: A Novel Dialogue Crossover Conversation
In this RTB and Novel Dialogue episode from 2021, Helen Garner sits down with John and Elizabeth McMahon, a distinguished scholar of Australian literature. Helen’s novels range from the anti-patriarch...Show More
6) Iria Seijas-Pérez, "Sapphic Adolescent Girls in Irish Young Adult Fiction: Queering Girlhood"(Routledge, 2025)
Sapphic Adolescent Girls in Irish Young Adult Fiction: Queering Girlhood (Routledge, 2025) is the first sustained critical analysis of the representation of sapphic adolescent protagonists in contemp...Show More
7) Sourit Bhattacharya, "Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising" (Orient BlackSwan, 2024)
Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising (Orient BlackSwan, 2024) by Sourit Bhattacharya introduces a new method of decolonial reading and criticism. It critically examines the history a...Show More
8) Hang Tu, "Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past" (Harvard UP, 2025)
How does emotion shape the landscape of public intellectual debate? In Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past (Harvard UP, 2025), Hang Tu proposes emotion as a new critical...Show More
9) Nicholas Boggs, "Baldwin: A Love Story" (FSG, 2025)
Baldwin: A Love Story (FSG, 2025) the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, reveals how profoundly the writer’s personal relationships shaped his life and work. Drawing on newly unc...Show More
10) Ann Komaromi, "Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (Cornell UP, 2022) traces the emergence and development of samizdat, a significant and distinctive phenomenon of the late Soviet era that provided an uncensore...Show More