LanguaTalk

New Books in Literary Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Asif Iqbal, "Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature: Cultural Imaginings of a Postcolonial Nation" (Routledge, 2025)

35 mins; April 02, 2026

Jeanne-Marie Jackson, "The Letter of the Law in J. E. Casely Hayford's West Africa" (Princeton UP, 2026)

69 hours 47 mins; March 31, 2026

Pre-Reading

20 mins; March 30, 2026

Ainehi Edoro, "Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think" (Columbia UP, 2026)

62 hours 2 mins; March 29, 2026

Megan Peiser, "British Women Novelists and the Review Periodical" (JHU Press, 2026)

35 mins; March 28, 2026

John Kuhn, "Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

38 mins; March 27, 2026

Why Did Langston Hughes's "Troubled Lands" Go Unpublished for Nearly a Century?: A Conversation with Ricardo Wilson

48 mins; March 27, 2026

10.2 Beautiful Sentences Matter. Billy-Ray Belcourt and Matt Hooley (SW)

43 mins; March 26, 2026

S. D. Ellison, "Hope for a New David in the Psalter's Narrative Impulse: Reading the Psalms as Utopian Literature" (Fortress Academic, 2025)

34 mins; March 25, 2026

Hsuan L Hsu, "Olfactory Worldmaking" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

26 mins; March 24, 2026

Claire Goldstein, "Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

39 mins; March 24, 2026

The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem

63 hours 17 mins; March 24, 2026

Prolepsis

16 mins; March 23, 2026

David Bather Woods, "Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

76 hours 34 mins; March 23, 2026

Imagining Independence; or, Why Does Rip Van Winkle Sleep Through the Revolution?

58 mins; March 20, 2026

Hiromi Ito, "The Thorn Puller" (Stone Bridge Press, 2022)

44 mins; March 20, 2026

Pedro Thiago Ramos Bassoe, "Supernatural Japan: Izumi Kyoka and the Global Fantastic" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

32 mins; March 18, 2026

Suzanne Bost, "Quiet Methodologies: Humility in the Humanities" (U Minnesota Press)

56 mins; March 15, 2026

E. and H. Heron, "Flaxman Low: Occult Detective" (MIT Press, 2026)

24 mins; March 15, 2026

William H. F. Altman, "Ascent to the Good: The Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues from Symposium to Republic" (Lexington, 2018)

83 hours 12 mins; March 14, 2026

An Evening with Philip Roth: A Conversation with Bernard Avishai, Igor Webb, and Steven Zipperstein

67 hours 3 mins; March 13, 2026

10.1 "Extreme Circumstances, Extreme Reactions:” Aaron Gwyn and Sean McCann (JP)

46 mins; March 13, 2026

Cheng Li, "Contested Environmentalisms: Trees and the Making of Modern China" (Stanford UP, 2025)

49 mins; March 12, 2026

Dana A. Williams, "Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship" (Amistad, 2025)

50 mins; March 10, 2026

Charles Delgadillo and James Stacey, eds., "Heartland Utopia: William Allen White on the Ideal Midwestern Town" (UP of Kansas, 2026)

54 mins; March 09, 2026

Damion Searls, "The Philosophy of Translation" (Yale UP, 2024)

57 mins; March 05, 2026

Eric Weiskott, "Cycle of Dreams" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021) and "Piers Plowman: A New Annotated Edition of the A-Text" (U Exeter Press, 2025)

63 hours 8 mins; March 04, 2026

Reginald Jackson, “Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls” (U Michigan Press, 2018)

81 hours 19 mins; March 01, 2026

Michèle Schaal, "Grrrl Writing: Virginie Despentes's Authorial Politics" (Peter Lang, 2026)

35 mins; February 24, 2026

American Masterpiece: The Civil War Diaries of George Templeton Strong with Brenda Wineapple and Geoff Wisner

60 hours 29 mins; February 23, 2026

Richard Schoch, "Shakespeare’s House: A Window onto his Life and Legacy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

59 mins; February 22, 2026

Helen Garner Hacking Away at the Adverbs: A Novel Dialogue Crossover Conversation

52 mins; February 19, 2026

Iria Seijas-Pérez, "Sapphic Adolescent Girls in Irish Young Adult Fiction: Queering Girlhood"(Routledge, 2025)

74 hours 5 mins; February 14, 2026

Sourit Bhattacharya, "Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising" (Orient BlackSwan, 2024)

58 mins; February 13, 2026

Hang Tu, "Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past" (Harvard UP, 2025)

62 hours 27 mins; February 11, 2026

Nicholas Boggs, "Baldwin: A Love Story" (FSG, 2025)

38 mins; February 10, 2026

Ann Komaromi, "Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society" (Cornell UP, 2022)

50 mins; February 08, 2026

Polina Dimova, "At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism" (Penn State UP, 2024)

62 hours 35 mins; February 06, 2026

Kevin Hart, "Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

77 hours 43 mins; February 05, 2026

Jacqueline Couti and Anny Dominique Curtius, "Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements in Francophone Settings" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

77 hours 31 mins; February 03, 2026

Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War" (Stanford UP, 2023)

43 mins; January 31, 2026

Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)

105 hours 56 mins; January 29, 2026

Natasha Heller, "Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan" (U Hawai'i Press, 2025)

67 hours 15 mins; January 26, 2026

Christian Raffensperger, "Authorship, Worldview, and Identity in Medieval Europe" (Routledge, 2022)

46 mins; January 24, 2026

Alison Rowlands, "Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561-1652" (Manchester UP, 2026)

52 mins; January 21, 2026

Anne Sokolsky ed., "Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)

63 hours 10 mins; January 20, 2026

Sara Petrosillo, "Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture" (Ohio State UP, 2023)

50 mins; January 19, 2026

Catherine Clarke, "A History of England in 25 Poems" (Penguin, 2025)

57 mins; January 17, 2026

Zoë McGee, "Courting Disaster: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel" (Manchester UP, 2025)

63 hours 57 mins; January 15, 2026

Madhuri Deshmukh, "The Unraveling Heart: Women's Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi" (Columbia UP, 2025)

39 mins; January 15, 2026

Alvin K. Wong, "Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone" (Duke UP, 2025)

69 hours 14 mins; January 13, 2026

Sarah Dowling, "Here Is a Figure: Grounding Literary Form" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

73 hours 50 mins; January 13, 2026

T. R. Johnson, "New Orleans: A Writer's City" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

38 mins; January 10, 2026

Serk-Bae Suh, "Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)

67 hours 40 mins; January 09, 2026

Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)

43 mins; January 08, 2026

Barbara Jane Brickman, "Suffering Sappho! Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

76 hours 3 mins; January 08, 2026

Sheiba Kian Kaufman, "Persian Paradigms in Early Modern English Drama" (Oxford UP, 2025)

59 mins; January 07, 2026

Miriam Udel, "Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children's Literature" (Princeton UP, 2025)

59 mins; January 06, 2026

Thomas J. Mazanec, "Poet-Monks: The Invention of Buddhist Poetry in Late Medieval China" (Cornell UP, 2024)

74 hours 58 mins; January 05, 2026

Scott Feinberg, “The Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time” (2023)

55 mins; January 05, 2026

Susan McCready, "Commemorative Acts: French Theatre and the Memory of the Great War" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

48 mins; January 04, 2026

Jeff Jarvis, "Magazine" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

40 mins; January 03, 2026

D. J. Taylor, "Orwell: The New Life" (Pegasus Books, 2023)

46 mins; January 02, 2026

Gil Ben-Herut, "Stories of Shiva's Saints: Selections from Harihara's Ragales" (Oxford UP, 2025)

66 hours 29 mins; January 01, 2026

Tony Spawforth, "What the Greeks Did for Us" (Yale UP, 2023)

57 mins; January 01, 2026

Richard Bradford, "Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

72 hours 9 mins; December 29, 2025

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, "Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

59 mins; December 27, 2025

Filip Kovacevic, "KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

51 mins; December 25, 2025

Patrick C. Fleming, "Animating the Victorians: Disney's Literary History" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

37 mins; December 23, 2025

Liberation & the Literature of the Women’s Movement with Bess Wohl and Honor Moore

56 mins; December 23, 2025

Zubeda Jalalzai, "Literary License and the West’s Romance with Afghanistan" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

25 mins; December 22, 2025

Judith Jesch, "The Saga of the Earls of Orkney" (Birlinn, 2025)

49 mins; December 21, 2025

Veronica House, "Local Organic: Food Rhetorics and Community Writing for Impact" (Utah State UP, 2025)

53 mins; December 20, 2025

Arthur Bahr, "Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

42 mins; December 20, 2025

Gian Piero Persiani, "Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan" (Brill, 2025)

33 mins; December 19, 2025

Shiben Banerji, "Lineages of the Global City: Occult Modernism and the Spiritualization of Democracy" (U Texas Press, 2025)

66 hours 8 mins; December 18, 2025

Tullia d'Aragona, "The Wretch, Otherwise Known As Guerrino" (Iter Press, 2024)

51 mins; December 15, 2025

Aubrey Gabel, "The Politics of Play: Oulipo and the Legacy of French Literary Ludics" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

47 mins; December 15, 2025

Jonathan Eburne, "Exploded Views: Speculative Form and the Labor of Inquiry" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

68 hours 6 mins; December 09, 2025

Carlo Rotella, "What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics" (U California Press, 2025)

69 hours 35 mins; December 07, 2025

Claire Parnell, "Inequalities of Platform Publishing: The Promise and Peril of Self-Publishing in the Digital Book Era" (U Massachusetts Press, 2025

44 mins; December 07, 2025

Anna Shadrina, "The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia" (UCL Press, 2025)

44 mins; December 04, 2025

Reading the Bible with AI?: A Conversation with John Kaag, Philosopher and Co-Founder of Rebind AI

42 mins; December 03, 2025

Sarah F. Derbew, "Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

64 hours 9 mins; December 01, 2025

Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Breathing Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2022)

63 hours 40 mins; November 30, 2025

Sarah Ruden, "Vergil: The Poet's Life" (Yale UP, 2023)

65 hours 35 mins; November 28, 2025

Marion Turner, "The Wife of Bath: A Biography" (Princeton UP, 2023)

44 mins; November 27, 2025

Mary Edwards, "Sartre’s Existential Psychoanalysis: Knowing Others" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

107 hours 46 mins; November 23, 2025

Ilan Kelman, "Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries" (UCL Press, 2022)

42 mins; November 23, 2025

Carlo Rotella, "What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics" (U California Press, 2025)

47 mins; November 18, 2025

Jemma Deer, "Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

45 mins; November 16, 2025

Jenny C. Mann, "The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime" (Princeton UP, 2021)

48 mins; November 08, 2025

Andrea Kitta, "The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore" (Utah State UP, 2019)

69 hours 41 mins; November 08, 2025

James Scorer, "Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century: Transgressing the Frame" (U Texas Press, 2024)

41 mins; November 04, 2025

Jessica Campbell, "The Brontës and the Fairy Tale" (Ohio UP, 2024)

55 mins; November 01, 2025

Aria Fani, "Reading Across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism" (U Texas Press, 2024)

52 mins; October 31, 2025

159 Glenn Patterson: You Can Choose Who You Are (JP, DC)

65 hours 10 mins; October 30, 2025

John Blair, "Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World" (Princeton UP, 2025)

51 mins; October 30, 2025

Cosima Clara Gillhammer, "Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy" (Reaktion Books, 2025)

72 hours 24 mins; October 30, 2025

Theresa Muñoz, "Archivum" (Pavillion Poetry at Liverpool UP, 2025)

39 mins; October 29, 2025

Click here to see more

New Books in Literary Studies

Useful pages

Find a tutor

Languages