New Books In Literary Studies

American comics from the start have reflected the white supremacist culture out of which they arose. Superheroes and comic books in general are products of whiteness, and both signal and hide its presence. Even when comics creators and publishers sought to advance an antiracist agenda, their attempts were often undermined by a lack of awareness of their own whiteness and the ideological baggage that goes along with it. Even the most celebrated figures of the industry, such as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Jack Jackson, William Gaines, Stan Lee, Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, and Frank Miller, have not been able to distance themselves from the problematic racism embedded in their narratives despite their intentions or explanations. In Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes: Whiteness and Its Borderlands in American Comics and Graphic Novels (University of Mississippi Press, 2022), Dr. Josef Benson and Dr. Doug Singsen provide a sober assessment of these creators and their role in perpetuating racism throughout the hist

For better or worse, artists write. But why would a visual artist write a novel? How should such a novel be experienced? How does the artist’s novel compare or compete with literary fiction as we know it? David Maroto, the author of The Artist's Novel: A New Medium (Mousse Publishing, 2020) considers the proliferation of artists writing novels as a sign of the emergence of a new medium. Artists engaging in this new medium do so in order to address artistic issues by means of novelistic devices, favouring a sort of art predicated on process and subjectivity, introducing notions such as fiction, narrative, and imagination. Maroto’s work is the first to explore the subject of the artist’s novel in depth. David Maroto speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the artist’s novel and the demands it makes on its readers and, as he found out through his own practice, on its curators and publishers. David reads from Benjamin Seror's Mime Radio and voices the mythical satyr Marsyas but, sadly, stops short of singing. David M

At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva (Bloomsbury, 2020) is the first biography of Julia Kristeva--one of the most celebrated intellectuals in the world. Alice Jardine brings Kristeva's work to a broader readership by connecting Kristeva's personal journey, from her childhood in Communist Bulgaria to her adult life as an international public intellectual based in Paris, with the history of her ideas. Informed by extensive interviews with Kristeva herself, this telling of a remarkable woman's life story also draws out the complexities of Kristeva's writing, emphasizing her call for an urgent revival of bold interdisciplinary thinking in order to understand--and to act in--today's world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Elizabeth and John talk about fantasy's power of world-making with Edinburgh professor Anna Vaninskaya, author of William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda, 1880-1914 ( 2010) and Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien ( 2020). Anna uncovers the melancholy sense of displacement and loss running through Tolkien, and links his notion of "subcreation" to an often concealed theological vision. Not allegory but "application" is praised as a way of reading fantasy. John asks about hopeful visions of the radical politics of fantasy (Le Guin, but also Graeber and Wengrow's recent work); Elizabeth stresses that fantasy's appeal is at once childish and childlike. E. Nesbit surfaces, as she tends to in RtB conversations. The question of film TV and other visual modes comes up: is textual fantasy on the way out? Mentioned in the Episode: David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything. In "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" Ursula Le Guin perhaps surprisingly praises t

In this episode Kim and Saronik discuss Bruno Latour’s essay, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004): 225-248. Image source: M. Platen, The New Curative Treatment of Disease: Handbook of Hygienic Rules of Life, Health Culture, and the Cure of Ailments Without the Aid of Drugs… London : Bong & Co., 1893, p. 668 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Saronik asks Chad about narrators in fiction, and life, who cannot be trusted – their quirks, productive unreliabilities, their effect on present politics, the works! We talk around Wayne C. Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chad Hegelmeyer is a postdoc in English at NYU. His current project is sunbathing while reading Hannah Arendt. The Capybara stands, proudly, in place of Chad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Jacob Mchangama, founder and director of the think tank Justitia, has written a one-volume history of freedom of thought, which ranges from the lone Demosthenes of 4th-century BCE Athens to the recent controversies regarding Donald Trump. In Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media (Basic Books, 2022), Mchangama argues that the history of freedom of thought has recurrent themes, such as a free speech entropy: the perception of rulers or governments that if speech is not restricted then social or political decline or disorder is inevitable. Mchangama also notes how restrictions usually have the unintended effect of emboldening the speakers and making the forbidden speech even more attractive to potential listeners. This history also reveals advocates of free speech less familiar to Western readers, such as the ninth-century Persian scholar Ibn al-Rawandi, a theologian and later skeptic whose life illustrates the debates possible in medieval Islam. Mchangama reviews the modern debates regarding f

An interview with Jennifer Egan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and author most recently of The Candy House (Scribner, 2022), the story of the intersections across space and time of characters desperate to understand their interior lives. At the hub of these stories, a machine capable of capturing and sharing memories, and even offering the possibility of joining a collectivity of consciousness. Jennifer Egan, as always, balances perfectly the profound intellectual problems of existence with characters who feel deeply real by virtue of their uncommon minds. We get to talking about how her process is one of discovery through the unconscious practice of writing, and the ways in which certain ideas of what the reader should feel and experience guide her structure. We discuss her creation of the futuristic machine in The Candy House that, in the end, fashions what only the novel can produce: a window into the minds and memories of another. On the subject of movement back

In In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton University Press, 2022), Jeff Deutsch, the director of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores in Chicago, aims to make the case for the value of spaces devoted to books and the value of the time spent browsing their stacks. It is a defense of serious bookstores, but more importantly, it is a paean to the spaces that support them; the experience of readers as they engage with the books, the stacks, and each other; and the particular community created by the presence of such an institution. Drawing on his lifelong experience as a bookseller and his particular experience at Sem Co-op, Deutsch aims, in a series of brief essays, to consider how concepts like space, time, abundance, measure, community, and reverence find expression in a good bookstore, and to show some ways in which the importance of the bookstore is both urgent and enduring. Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses

Time and again, antebellum Americans justified slavery and white supremacy by linking blackness to disability, defectiveness, and dependency. In The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America (University of Illinois Press, 2021), historian Jenifer L. Barclay examines the ubiquitous narratives that depicted black people with disabilities as pitiable, monstrous, or comical, narratives used not only to defend slavery but argue against it. As she shows, this relationship between ableism and racism impacted racial identities during the antebellum period and played an overlooked role in shaping American history afterward. Barclay also illuminates the everyday lives of the ten percent of enslaved people who lived with disabilities. Devalued by slaveholders as unsound and therefore worthless, these individuals nonetheless carved out an unusual autonomy. Their roles as caregivers, healers, and keepers of memory made them esteemed within their own communities and celebrated figures in song and

An interview with Jennifer Egan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and author most recently of The Candy House (Scribner, 2022), the story of the intersections across space and time of characters desperate to understand their interior lives. At the hub of these stories, a machine capable of capturing and sharing memories, and even offering the possibility of joining a collectivity of consciousness. Jennifer Egan, as always, balances perfectly the profound intellectual problems of existence with characters who feel deeply real by virtue of their uncommon minds. We get to talking about how her process is one of discovery through the unconscious practice of writing, and the ways in which certain ideas of what the reader should feel and experience guide her structure. We discuss her creation of the futuristic machine in The Candy House that, in the end, fashions what only the novel can produce: a window into the minds and memories of another. On the subject of movement back

The world today seems to be slipping into a science fiction future. We have phones that speak to us, cars that drive themselves, and connected devices that communicate with each other in languages we don't understand. Depending the news of the day, we inhabit either a technological utopia or Brave New World nightmare. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge surveys the uses of science fiction. Sherryl Vint's Science Fiction (MIT Press, 2021)focuses on what is at the core of all definitions of science fiction: a vision of the world made otherwise and what possibilities might flow from such otherness. Frances Sacks is a journalist and graduate of Wesleyan University where she studied in the Science and Society Program. She is also a drummer who has studied Gamelan in Bali, Berber in Morocco, and most traditional Ga patterns with master drummers in Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.f

In this episode Saronik asks Kim about the aura. The idea comes from Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Besides the central text, the episode references Benjamin’s 1940 essay, “On the Concept of History” in which the Angel of History appears. We also talk about Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” And make a passing mention of the British artist Banksy. The image is a photograph that Kim took of a painting of peaches in an art museum in Amsterdam. She forgets artist and title of the painting, and would welcome reminders from listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Growing Out of Communism: Russian Literature for Children and Teens, 1991-2017 (Brill, 2021) explores the rise of a new body of literature for children and teens following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent transformation of the publishing industry. Lanoux, Herold, and Bukhina first consider the Soviet foundations of the new literature, then chart the influx of translated literature into Russia in the 1990s. In tracing the development of new literature that reflects the lived experiences of contemporary children and teens, the book examines changes to literary institutions, dominant genres, and archetypal heroes. Also discussed are the informal networks and online reader responses that reflect the views of child and teen readers. Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.suppo

Welcome to High Theory! High Theory is a podcast in which we get high on the substance of theory. And we ask the three standard questions, to each other, and our guests. We invite you to listen and learn, and think critically! This podcast comes at difficult ideas from the academy with irreverence. Wikipedia says that “critical theory” is “the reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures,” which suggests a rather serious subject, but we think theory is hardly dense and somber and sober. In these times, we need to love, and finding the buzz of curiosity and delight in critical thinking, we want to bring that joy to you. We aim to distill some solid points from our ramblings. We are looking at theory differently, and making pretty wild connections. Like maybe having and loving a dog will make you a better activist. Or hating on Humbert Humbert might help you sift through fake news. If you have an idea you would like us to talk about, let us know! Le

In the hills north of Rome about a month ago I met a woman, a writer, so blown away by her Dottoressa, her psychoanalyst, that she announced to the surprise of all around her (surprised I want to add that she was in analysis in the first place) that she was writing a book about her treatment. I thought of H.D. I thought of Alison Bechdel. Then I thought of Emma Lieber. The Writing Cure (Bloomsbury, 2020), Lieber’s first book, is a hybrid text—equal parts the work of an analysand, a new clinician, a scholar of Russian literature, and a divorcing mother. It is also the work of a Lacanian-influenced analyst whose analytic credential comes from an institute not especially associated with the work of Lacan; as such, the book functions as a kind of “pass”, a representation of what it is that the author wants to present to a community of analysts who she hopes will see her as a peer. Her writing is creaturely by which I mean her words are close to the ground. She is funny. She is droll. She takes you into a nook and

Shola von Reinhold is the author of LOTE, a novel about getting lost in the archives and finding what the archives have lost. LOTE won the 2021 James Tait Black prize so who better to join Shola on Novel Dialogue than Ben Bateman of Edinburgh University, lead judge of the prize committee? This conversation takes listeners back to all yesterday’s parties as Shola, Ben, and Aarthi time travel to the Harlem Renaissance and the interwar modernist era. Shola offers up Richard Bruce Nugent as their current figure of fascination (or “transfixion” to use a key image from LOTE), and wonders what it would have been like to move through Harlem and London by Nugent’s side. Recovering the stories of black writers and artists is essential to Shola’s literary project. It is also inseparable from restoring queerness to the once hyper-masculine and “muscular” paradigm of modernism. In a stirring discussion of the aesthetic forms and moods of historical recovery, Ben and Shola sink into the “purpleness” of the fin-de-siècle an

By showing how a wide, and surprising, range of Caribbean writers have contributed to the crafting of a supple and inclusive erotic repertoire across the second half of the twentieth century, the readings in Creolized Sexualities: Undoing Heteronormativity in the Literary Imagination of the Anglo-Caribbean (Rutgers University Press, 2021) aim to demonstrate that a recognition of creolized and pluralized sexualities already exists within the literary imagination. Professor Alison Donnell and I talk about her writing process and inspiration, the importance of place, and the ways this book might help us rethink the queer Caribbean.  Alejandra Bronfman is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Latin American, Caribbean & U.S. Latino Studies at SUNY, Albany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries (UCL Press, 2022) edited by Ilan Kelman Antarcticness joins disciplines, communication approaches, and ideas to explore meanings and depictions of Antarctica. Personal and professional words in poetry and prose, plus images, present and represent Antarctica, as presumed and as imagined, alongside what is experienced around the continent and by those watching from afar. These understandings explain how the Antarctic is viewed and managed while identifying aspects that should be more prominent in policy and practice. The authors and artists place Antarctica, and the perceptions and knowledge through Antarcticness, within inspirations and imaginations, without losing sight of the multiple interests pushing the continent’s governance as it goes through rapid political and environmental changes. Given the diversity and disparity of the influences and changes, the book’s contributions connect to provide a more coherent and encompassing perspective of how society views Ant

In Literature in Motion: Translating Multilingualism Across the Americas (Columbia University Press, 2022), Ellen C. Jones centers not just translation but multilingualism as both an artistic practice and scholarly lens through which to examine the production and reception of literature across the Americas. Focusing on writers who use mixed language forms such as “Spanglish,” “Portunhol,” and “Frenglish,” she shows how these authors and their translators use multilingualism to disrupt binaries and hierarchies in language, gender, and literary production itself.   In this episode of NBN, Ellen Jones discusses the complex relationship and perceived tensions between translation and multilingualism, the sociopolitical forces that have shaped the status of multilingualism within the United States, her experience translating Susana Chávez-Silverman’s multilingual writing, multilingualism as queer practice in Giannina Braschi’s Yo-Yo Boing! and Tess O’Dwyer’s English-only translation of Yo-Yo Boing!, indigenous mult