Podcasts about oxford up

With commentary on the emergence of a ‘multipolar' world, of transatlantic rifts and the rise of ‘middle powers' ubiquitous, tales of the decline of something called ‘the West' seem to be everywhere. Yet the meanings the idea of ‘the West' acquires in spaces beyond it tell us at least as much about the state of the world as portents of its demise. Based on a combination of cultural analysis of historical writings and—most strikingly—deep immersion in often very spicy Chinese social media fora, Chenchen Zhang's new book Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China (Oxford University Press, 2026) theorises the shifting significations ascribed to ‘the West' in China since the late-imperial collision with European empires. Whether imagined as a source of modernity, a colonial exploiter, geopolitical rival or—most recently—a civilisation sunk into decadence and decay, ‘the West'—Zhang shows—is a foil for China-based worldviews which, whatever their anticolonial or anti-Western sentiments, are also entangled with Eurocentric hierarchies of race, nation and gender whose patriarchal and civilisational histories are rooted at least partly that very same ‘West'.

Our recent conversation about Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir (Oxford UP, 2026), with author Niharika Pandit, covers the journey of how critical methodology meets the weight of lived experience. This book examines the everyday politics of militarized control in Kashmir following the Indian government's August 5, 2019, decision to de-operationalize Jammu and Kashmir's nominal autonomy. The core of our reflection centered on how one theorizes through such an intense archive. The book avoids abstract distance, relying instead on a rigorous post-2019 archive built from ethnographic fieldwork and rooted in interdisciplinary feminist studies. It demonstrates that theorizing is not a passive intellectual exercise, instead, it is an active, grounded practice of mapping power where it is felt most directly. Through intersectional analyses of space, home, time, and storytelling, the text reveals how militarized control operates via spatial, embodied, affective, temporal, and discursive capture. Reflecting on this book serves as a vital reminder that critical theorizing must remain tethered to the grounded realities of resistance.

Constructing the Medieval Maritime State: Identity, Violence, and Connection in the Mediterranean (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Professor Travis Bruce explores how the small medieval kingdom of Denia in Spain became a powerful maritime state after the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate. Its rulers built authority, not only through war and seafaring raids but also by connecting Denia to wider Mediterranean trade, diplomacy, and culture. The rise and evolution of the taifa of Denia is a powerful case study for understanding the construction of medieval maritime states in the Mediterranean. Dr. Bruce situates Denia within the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate and explores how its rulers forged legitimacy through identity formation, maritime violence, and regional connectivity. Denia's identity was negotiated through rulership, unfreedom, and cultural hybridity, and violence — particularly predatory warfare and maritime jihad — functioned as both statecraft and economic extraction. At the same time, Denia's entanglement in commercial, diplomatic, and intellectual networks positioned it as a key node linking the Islamic Mediterranean and the Latin West. The state's trajectory cannot be reduced to narratives of decline or simple religious conflict but instead reveals a process of negotiation shaped by mobility, interdependence, and the fluid boundaries between public and private power. This narrative reframes Mediterranean history beyond Eurocentric paradigms and underscores the significance of Islamic maritime states within the wider medieval world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Constructing the Medieval Maritime State: Identity, Violence, and Connection in the Mediterranean (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Professor Travis Bruce explores how the small medieval kingdom of Denia in Spain became a powerful maritime state after the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate. Its rulers built authority, not only through war and seafaring raids but also by connecting Denia to wider Mediterranean trade, diplomacy, and culture. The rise and evolution of the taifa of Denia is a powerful case study for understanding the construction of medieval maritime states in the Mediterranean. Dr. Bruce situates Denia within the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate and explores how its rulers forged legitimacy through identity formation, maritime violence, and regional connectivity. Denia's identity was negotiated through rulership, unfreedom, and cultural hybridity, and violence — particularly predatory warfare and maritime jihad — functioned as both statecraft and economic extraction. At the same time, Denia's entanglement in commercial, diplomatic, and intellectual networks positioned it as a key node linking the Islamic Mediterranean and the Latin West. The state's trajectory cannot be reduced to narratives of decline or simple religious conflict but instead reveals a process of negotiation shaped by mobility, interdependence, and the fluid boundaries between public and private power. This narrative reframes Mediterranean history beyond Eurocentric paradigms and underscores the significance of Islamic maritime states within the wider medieval world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Constructing the Medieval Maritime State: Identity, Violence, and Connection in the Mediterranean (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Professor Travis Bruce explores how the small medieval kingdom of Denia in Spain became a powerful maritime state after the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate. Its rulers built authority, not only through war and seafaring raids but also by connecting Denia to wider Mediterranean trade, diplomacy, and culture. The rise and evolution of the taifa of Denia is a powerful case study for understanding the construction of medieval maritime states in the Mediterranean. Dr. Bruce situates Denia within the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate and explores how its rulers forged legitimacy through identity formation, maritime violence, and regional connectivity. Denia's identity was negotiated through rulership, unfreedom, and cultural hybridity, and violence — particularly predatory warfare and maritime jihad — functioned as both statecraft and economic extraction. At the same time, Denia's entanglement in commercial, diplomatic, and intellectual networks positioned it as a key node linking the Islamic Mediterranean and the Latin West. The state's trajectory cannot be reduced to narratives of decline or simple religious conflict but instead reveals a process of negotiation shaped by mobility, interdependence, and the fluid boundaries between public and private power. This narrative reframes Mediterranean history beyond Eurocentric paradigms and underscores the significance of Islamic maritime states within the wider medieval world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 

Deciphering the Hidden Meaning: Language and the Highest Good in Early Advaita Vedānta (Oxford UP, 2026) presents a transformative history of one of the most significant ideas in Indian philosophy: liberation. Taking the great philosopher Śaṅkara as the focal point, Aleksandar Uskokov analyzes the relationship between liberation, language, and scripture. While modern portraits of Śaṅkara often cast him as a mystic or a religious reformer, the book paints a more complex portrait of the historical Śaṅkara. As a theologian of liberation, Śaṅkara was a maverick within the prevailing Brahmanical ideology of his time. In an intellectual landscape dominated by Mīmāṁsā ritualists and Vedāntic practitioners of meditation, Śaṅkara introduced a radical claim: that the paraṁ śreyas ("highest good") is attained not through action, ritual, or prolonged meditation, but through the immediate, intellectual understanding of the Upaniṣadic identity statements. Uskokov shows that the birth of the mahā-vākya or "great statement"--such as tat tvam asi ("You are That")--was not the work of Śaṅkara himself, but rather his tenth-century follower Sarvajñātman who used the structural logic of the Mīmāṁsā school. The book meticulously traces the evolution of this soteriological model, exploring how early Advaitins navigated complex debates over language, ritual causality, and the nature of the Self. In doing so, it argues that Śaṅkara's most significant contribution was his intervention against Vedic theologians who viewed scripture as a guide for action and meditation rather than primarily informative. Open Access here

Amidst heightened rhetoric and increasing polarization in the United States, American Pogroms: How Forgotten Massacres Shape America (Oxford University Press, 2026) chronicles the causes and consequences of two centuries of mob violence in American history, highlighting exactly what's at stake when we allow leaders to legitimate violence and the mob to rule. For much of American history, members of the majority population of the United States indiscriminately attacked and terrorized minority communities. In some parts of the country, mob violence seemed a near-constant part of the region's history, while in others it was a brief, horrific spasm that perpetrators--but not victims--quickly forgot. In American Pogroms, terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that there is a word for this type of communal violence: pogrom. Although pogroms are historically associated with the orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence in Tsarist Russia, Byman asserts that pogroms have been an all-too-frequent feature of American history. Tracing two centuries of communal violence, Byman recounts cases of attacks against American religious minorities such as Catholics and Mormons, the killing of thousands of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, the murder and wholesale expulsion of Chinese workers from the American West, and the repeated attacks on the Black community that killed thousands and enabled decades of brutal discrimination. In all these cases, pogroms helped cement a system of injustice that left religious, ethnic, and racial minorities politically and economically marginalized. While the idea of mob violence now strikes most Americans as unthinkable, Byman warns that increased polarization and selective news consumption in recent years has coarsened discourse and legitimized violence, raising the risk that at least some violence will return. A broad-ranging synthesis of how and why majorities have so frequently resorted to community-level violence to restore or cement their power, American Pogroms illustrates the outsized role of violence in U.S. history and how it shapes the country today. Daniel Byman is a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Amidst heightened rhetoric and increasing polarization in the United States, American Pogroms: How Forgotten Massacres Shape America (Oxford University Press, 2026) chronicles the causes and consequences of two centuries of mob violence in American history, highlighting exactly what's at stake when we allow leaders to legitimate violence and the mob to rule. For much of American history, members of the majority population of the United States indiscriminately attacked and terrorized minority communities. In some parts of the country, mob violence seemed a near-constant part of the region's history, while in others it was a brief, horrific spasm that perpetrators--but not victims--quickly forgot. In American Pogroms, terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that there is a word for this type of communal violence: pogrom. Although pogroms are historically associated with the orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence in Tsarist Russia, Byman asserts that pogroms have been an all-too-frequent feature of American history. Tracing two centuries of communal violence, Byman recounts cases of attacks against American religious minorities such as Catholics and Mormons, the killing of thousands of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, the murder and wholesale expulsion of Chinese workers from the American West, and the repeated attacks on the Black community that killed thousands and enabled decades of brutal discrimination. In all these cases, pogroms helped cement a system of injustice that left religious, ethnic, and racial minorities politically and economically marginalized. While the idea of mob violence now strikes most Americans as unthinkable, Byman warns that increased polarization and selective news consumption in recent years has coarsened discourse and legitimized violence, raising the risk that at least some violence will return. A broad-ranging synthesis of how and why majorities have so frequently resorted to community-level violence to restore or cement their power, American Pogroms illustrates the outsized role of violence in U.S. history and how it shapes the country today. Daniel Byman is a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Amidst heightened rhetoric and increasing polarization in the United States, American Pogroms: How Forgotten Massacres Shape America (Oxford University Press, 2026) chronicles the causes and consequences of two centuries of mob violence in American history, highlighting exactly what's at stake when we allow leaders to legitimate violence and the mob to rule. For much of American history, members of the majority population of the United States indiscriminately attacked and terrorized minority communities. In some parts of the country, mob violence seemed a near-constant part of the region's history, while in others it was a brief, horrific spasm that perpetrators--but not victims--quickly forgot. In American Pogroms, terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that there is a word for this type of communal violence: pogrom. Although pogroms are historically associated with the orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence in Tsarist Russia, Byman asserts that pogroms have been an all-too-frequent feature of American history. Tracing two centuries of communal violence, Byman recounts cases of attacks against American religious minorities such as Catholics and Mormons, the killing of thousands of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, the murder and wholesale expulsion of Chinese workers from the American West, and the repeated attacks on the Black community that killed thousands and enabled decades of brutal discrimination. In all these cases, pogroms helped cement a system of injustice that left religious, ethnic, and racial minorities politically and economically marginalized. While the idea of mob violence now strikes most Americans as unthinkable, Byman warns that increased polarization and selective news consumption in recent years has coarsened discourse and legitimized violence, raising the risk that at least some violence will return. A broad-ranging synthesis of how and why majorities have so frequently resorted to community-level violence to restore or cement their power, American Pogroms illustrates the outsized role of violence in U.S. history and how it shapes the country today. Daniel Byman is a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west

Amidst heightened rhetoric and increasing polarization in the United States, American Pogroms: How Forgotten Massacres Shape America (Oxford University Press, 2026) chronicles the causes and consequences of two centuries of mob violence in American history, highlighting exactly what's at stake when we allow leaders to legitimate violence and the mob to rule. For much of American history, members of the majority population of the United States indiscriminately attacked and terrorized minority communities. In some parts of the country, mob violence seemed a near-constant part of the region's history, while in others it was a brief, horrific spasm that perpetrators--but not victims--quickly forgot. In American Pogroms, terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that there is a word for this type of communal violence: pogrom. Although pogroms are historically associated with the orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence in Tsarist Russia, Byman asserts that pogroms have been an all-too-frequent feature of American history. Tracing two centuries of communal violence, Byman recounts cases of attacks against American religious minorities such as Catholics and Mormons, the killing of thousands of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, the murder and wholesale expulsion of Chinese workers from the American West, and the repeated attacks on the Black community that killed thousands and enabled decades of brutal discrimination. In all these cases, pogroms helped cement a system of injustice that left religious, ethnic, and racial minorities politically and economically marginalized. While the idea of mob violence now strikes most Americans as unthinkable, Byman warns that increased polarization and selective news consumption in recent years has coarsened discourse and legitimized violence, raising the risk that at least some violence will return. A broad-ranging synthesis of how and why majorities have so frequently resorted to community-level violence to restore or cement their power, American Pogroms illustrates the outsized role of violence in U.S. history and how it shapes the country today. Daniel Byman is a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amidst heightened rhetoric and increasing polarization in the United States, American Pogroms: How Forgotten Massacres Shape America (Oxford University Press, 2026) chronicles the causes and consequences of two centuries of mob violence in American history, highlighting exactly what's at stake when we allow leaders to legitimate violence and the mob to rule. For much of American history, members of the majority population of the United States indiscriminately attacked and terrorized minority communities. In some parts of the country, mob violence seemed a near-constant part of the region's history, while in others it was a brief, horrific spasm that perpetrators--but not victims--quickly forgot. In American Pogroms, terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that there is a word for this type of communal violence: pogrom. Although pogroms are historically associated with the orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence in Tsarist Russia, Byman asserts that pogroms have been an all-too-frequent feature of American history. Tracing two centuries of communal violence, Byman recounts cases of attacks against American religious minorities such as Catholics and Mormons, the killing of thousands of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, the murder and wholesale expulsion of Chinese workers from the American West, and the repeated attacks on the Black community that killed thousands and enabled decades of brutal discrimination. In all these cases, pogroms helped cement a system of injustice that left religious, ethnic, and racial minorities politically and economically marginalized. While the idea of mob violence now strikes most Americans as unthinkable, Byman warns that increased polarization and selective news consumption in recent years has coarsened discourse and legitimized violence, raising the risk that at least some violence will return. A broad-ranging synthesis of how and why majorities have so frequently resorted to community-level violence to restore or cement their power, American Pogroms illustrates the outsized role of violence in U.S. history and how it shapes the country today. Daniel Byman is a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-south

Amidst heightened rhetoric and increasing polarization in the United States, American Pogroms: How Forgotten Massacres Shape America (Oxford University Press, 2026) chronicles the causes and consequences of two centuries of mob violence in American history, highlighting exactly what's at stake when we allow leaders to legitimate violence and the mob to rule. For much of American history, members of the majority population of the United States indiscriminately attacked and terrorized minority communities. In some parts of the country, mob violence seemed a near-constant part of the region's history, while in others it was a brief, horrific spasm that perpetrators--but not victims--quickly forgot. In American Pogroms, terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that there is a word for this type of communal violence: pogrom. Although pogroms are historically associated with the orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence in Tsarist Russia, Byman asserts that pogroms have been an all-too-frequent feature of American history. Tracing two centuries of communal violence, Byman recounts cases of attacks against American religious minorities such as Catholics and Mormons, the killing of thousands of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, the murder and wholesale expulsion of Chinese workers from the American West, and the repeated attacks on the Black community that killed thousands and enabled decades of brutal discrimination. In all these cases, pogroms helped cement a system of injustice that left religious, ethnic, and racial minorities politically and economically marginalized. While the idea of mob violence now strikes most Americans as unthinkable, Byman warns that increased polarization and selective news consumption in recent years has coarsened discourse and legitimized violence, raising the risk that at least some violence will return. A broad-ranging synthesis of how and why majorities have so frequently resorted to community-level violence to restore or cement their power, American Pogroms illustrates the outsized role of violence in U.S. history and how it shapes the country today. Daniel Byman is a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Fuller's The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a philosophical tour through scientific medicine, visiting its distinctive problems, particularly problems brought about by the twentieth century fusion of medicine with epidemiology. Drawing on the author's training in philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and clinical medicine, the book examines the contours of the ‘epidemiological medicine' that resulted from this fusion. It dissects several philosophical problems of the new modern medicine while exploring topics such as theories of contagion and cancer, concepts and theories of disease etiology, the nature of chronic diseases and mental disorders, concepts of medical risk, models of medical evidence and medical prediction, the problems of extrapolating from clinical research, therapeutic skepticism, and the future of modern medicine. Expansive, detailed, rigorous, insightful, and refreshingly penetrable, The New Modern Medicine is an ambitious contribution to the philosophy of medicine and to our understanding of scientific medicine. It is available online open access. This episode is hosted by Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Durham University and Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He is Director of the Durham-Johannesburg Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, and co-leads the Measurement Lab in the Institute for Medical Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of the American political system. This is a deeply and thoroughly researched book, with details and information coming from legal decisions, law review articles, political theory, congressional acts, federal government notices, historical data and understanding, medical information, and texts in political science, sociology, and economics. It is indeed a tour de force, but the reader doesn't really notice because it is such a propulsive and captivating narrative about how modern private corporations learned to capture and implement the advocacy practices that the social movements of the postwar period were using to make gains for previously disadvantaged groups (like African Americans, women, those with disabilities, and more). Frydl lays out the foundation for the analysis within the framework of liberalism, classical liberalism and modern liberalism. She takes pains to explain these distinctions and how our understanding of liberalism has also contributed to some of the shifts and adjustments that have transpired. What does become clear in all of the case studies and details is that this is really a story about the United States Congress—not the Judiciary—and that Congress has been responsible for many of these changes, even if these actions seem to elide public attention and scrutiny. In fact, it is very difficult to detect Congress's role in these instances, where Congress acted to essentially remove the Judiciary's powers to deliberate in these policy realms. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is about corporate identity politics, and the ways in which corporations worked to fend off regulatory reform, while not exactly using the expected pathways. Since corporations, unlike, say women or African Americans, do not have a history of exclusion or disadvantage within the American political or economic systems, the concept of corporate identity politics seems a bit odd, but Frydl makes a strong case for this understanding, through the case studies of Catholic hospitals and regulatory reform that provides an avenue towards allowing for more religious freedoms and protections for the hospitals themselves; the legislative reforms with regard to criminal codes in the 1970s and 1980s that instituted harsher sentencing guidelines for individuals but much more lax responses to corporate infractions; and finally in a comparative study of corporate speech regulation and speech regulation of labor unions in the United States. Frydl tells the story from all perspectives and dimensions, including who was working behind the scenes to move these protections forward over the past fifty years. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is a very important analysis of the strengthening of the position of corporate entities within the political, legal, and economic systems in the United States. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She is also author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not In My District (Peter Lang Publishers, 2003). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of the American political system. This is a deeply and thoroughly researched book, with details and information coming from legal decisions, law review articles, political theory, congressional acts, federal government notices, historical data and understanding, medical information, and texts in political science, sociology, and economics. It is indeed a tour de force, but the reader doesn't really notice because it is such a propulsive and captivating narrative about how modern private corporations learned to capture and implement the advocacy practices that the social movements of the postwar period were using to make gains for previously disadvantaged groups (like African Americans, women, those with disabilities, and more). Frydl lays out the foundation for the analysis within the framework of liberalism, classical liberalism and modern liberalism. She takes pains to explain these distinctions and how our understanding of liberalism has also contributed to some of the shifts and adjustments that have transpired. What does become clear in all of the case studies and details is that this is really a story about the United States Congress—not the Judiciary—and that Congress has been responsible for many of these changes, even if these actions seem to elide public attention and scrutiny. In fact, it is very difficult to detect Congress's role in these instances, where Congress acted to essentially remove the Judiciary's powers to deliberate in these policy realms. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is about corporate identity politics, and the ways in which corporations worked to fend off regulatory reform, while not exactly using the expected pathways. Since corporations, unlike, say women or African Americans, do not have a history of exclusion or disadvantage within the American political or economic systems, the concept of corporate identity politics seems a bit odd, but Frydl makes a strong case for this understanding, through the case studies of Catholic hospitals and regulatory reform that provides an avenue towards allowing for more religious freedoms and protections for the hospitals themselves; the legislative reforms with regard to criminal codes in the 1970s and 1980s that instituted harsher sentencing guidelines for individuals but much more lax responses to corporate infractions; and finally in a comparative study of corporate speech regulation and speech regulation of labor unions in the United States. Frydl tells the story from all perspectives and dimensions, including who was working behind the scenes to move these protections forward over the past fifty years. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is a very important analysis of the strengthening of the position of corporate entities within the political, legal, and economic systems in the United States. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She is also author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not In My District (Peter Lang Publishers, 2003). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Jonathan Fuller's The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a philosophical tour through scientific medicine, visiting its distinctive problems, particularly problems brought about by the twentieth century fusion of medicine with epidemiology. Drawing on the author's training in philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and clinical medicine, the book examines the contours of the ‘epidemiological medicine' that resulted from this fusion. It dissects several philosophical problems of the new modern medicine while exploring topics such as theories of contagion and cancer, concepts and theories of disease etiology, the nature of chronic diseases and mental disorders, concepts of medical risk, models of medical evidence and medical prediction, the problems of extrapolating from clinical research, therapeutic skepticism, and the future of modern medicine. Expansive, detailed, rigorous, insightful, and refreshingly penetrable, The New Modern Medicine is an ambitious contribution to the philosophy of medicine and to our understanding of scientific medicine. It is available online open access. This episode is hosted by Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Durham University and Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He is Director of the Durham-Johannesburg Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, and co-leads the Measurement Lab in the Institute for Medical Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Jonathan Fuller's The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a philosophical tour through scientific medicine, visiting its distinctive problems, particularly problems brought about by the twentieth century fusion of medicine with epidemiology. Drawing on the author's training in philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and clinical medicine, the book examines the contours of the ‘epidemiological medicine' that resulted from this fusion. It dissects several philosophical problems of the new modern medicine while exploring topics such as theories of contagion and cancer, concepts and theories of disease etiology, the nature of chronic diseases and mental disorders, concepts of medical risk, models of medical evidence and medical prediction, the problems of extrapolating from clinical research, therapeutic skepticism, and the future of modern medicine. Expansive, detailed, rigorous, insightful, and refreshingly penetrable, The New Modern Medicine is an ambitious contribution to the philosophy of medicine and to our understanding of scientific medicine. It is available online open access. This episode is hosted by Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Durham University and Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He is Director of the Durham-Johannesburg Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, and co-leads the Measurement Lab in the Institute for Medical Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of the American political system. This is a deeply and thoroughly researched book, with details and information coming from legal decisions, law review articles, political theory, congressional acts, federal government notices, historical data and understanding, medical information, and texts in political science, sociology, and economics. It is indeed a tour de force, but the reader doesn't really notice because it is such a propulsive and captivating narrative about how modern private corporations learned to capture and implement the advocacy practices that the social movements of the postwar period were using to make gains for previously disadvantaged groups (like African Americans, women, those with disabilities, and more). Frydl lays out the foundation for the analysis within the framework of liberalism, classical liberalism and modern liberalism. She takes pains to explain these distinctions and how our understanding of liberalism has also contributed to some of the shifts and adjustments that have transpired. What does become clear in all of the case studies and details is that this is really a story about the United States Congress—not the Judiciary—and that Congress has been responsible for many of these changes, even if these actions seem to elide public attention and scrutiny. In fact, it is very difficult to detect Congress's role in these instances, where Congress acted to essentially remove the Judiciary's powers to deliberate in these policy realms. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is about corporate identity politics, and the ways in which corporations worked to fend off regulatory reform, while not exactly using the expected pathways. Since corporations, unlike, say women or African Americans, do not have a history of exclusion or disadvantage within the American political or economic systems, the concept of corporate identity politics seems a bit odd, but Frydl makes a strong case for this understanding, through the case studies of Catholic hospitals and regulatory reform that provides an avenue towards allowing for more religious freedoms and protections for the hospitals themselves; the legislative reforms with regard to criminal codes in the 1970s and 1980s that instituted harsher sentencing guidelines for individuals but much more lax responses to corporate infractions; and finally in a comparative study of corporate speech regulation and speech regulation of labor unions in the United States. Frydl tells the story from all perspectives and dimensions, including who was working behind the scenes to move these protections forward over the past fifty years. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is a very important analysis of the strengthening of the position of corporate entities within the political, legal, and economic systems in the United States. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She is also author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not In My District (Peter Lang Publishers, 2003). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Jonathan Fuller's The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a philosophical tour through scientific medicine, visiting its distinctive problems, particularly problems brought about by the twentieth century fusion of medicine with epidemiology. Drawing on the author's training in philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and clinical medicine, the book examines the contours of the ‘epidemiological medicine' that resulted from this fusion. It dissects several philosophical problems of the new modern medicine while exploring topics such as theories of contagion and cancer, concepts and theories of disease etiology, the nature of chronic diseases and mental disorders, concepts of medical risk, models of medical evidence and medical prediction, the problems of extrapolating from clinical research, therapeutic skepticism, and the future of modern medicine. Expansive, detailed, rigorous, insightful, and refreshingly penetrable, The New Modern Medicine is an ambitious contribution to the philosophy of medicine and to our understanding of scientific medicine. It is available online open access. This episode is hosted by Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Durham University and Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He is Director of the Durham-Johannesburg Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, and co-leads the Measurement Lab in the Institute for Medical Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of the American political system. This is a deeply and thoroughly researched book, with details and information coming from legal decisions, law review articles, political theory, congressional acts, federal government notices, historical data and understanding, medical information, and texts in political science, sociology, and economics. It is indeed a tour de force, but the reader doesn't really notice because it is such a propulsive and captivating narrative about how modern private corporations learned to capture and implement the advocacy practices that the social movements of the postwar period were using to make gains for previously disadvantaged groups (like African Americans, women, those with disabilities, and more). Frydl lays out the foundation for the analysis within the framework of liberalism, classical liberalism and modern liberalism. She takes pains to explain these distinctions and how our understanding of liberalism has also contributed to some of the shifts and adjustments that have transpired. What does become clear in all of the case studies and details is that this is really a story about the United States Congress—not the Judiciary—and that Congress has been responsible for many of these changes, even if these actions seem to elide public attention and scrutiny. In fact, it is very difficult to detect Congress's role in these instances, where Congress acted to essentially remove the Judiciary's powers to deliberate in these policy realms. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is about corporate identity politics, and the ways in which corporations worked to fend off regulatory reform, while not exactly using the expected pathways. Since corporations, unlike, say women or African Americans, do not have a history of exclusion or disadvantage within the American political or economic systems, the concept of corporate identity politics seems a bit odd, but Frydl makes a strong case for this understanding, through the case studies of Catholic hospitals and regulatory reform that provides an avenue towards allowing for more religious freedoms and protections for the hospitals themselves; the legislative reforms with regard to criminal codes in the 1970s and 1980s that instituted harsher sentencing guidelines for individuals but much more lax responses to corporate infractions; and finally in a comparative study of corporate speech regulation and speech regulation of labor unions in the United States. Frydl tells the story from all perspectives and dimensions, including who was working behind the scenes to move these protections forward over the past fifty years. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is a very important analysis of the strengthening of the position of corporate entities within the political, legal, and economic systems in the United States. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She is also author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not In My District (Peter Lang Publishers, 2003). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of the American political system. This is a deeply and thoroughly researched book, with details and information coming from legal decisions, law review articles, political theory, congressional acts, federal government notices, historical data and understanding, medical information, and texts in political science, sociology, and economics. It is indeed a tour de force, but the reader doesn't really notice because it is such a propulsive and captivating narrative about how modern private corporations learned to capture and implement the advocacy practices that the social movements of the postwar period were using to make gains for previously disadvantaged groups (like African Americans, women, those with disabilities, and more). Frydl lays out the foundation for the analysis within the framework of liberalism, classical liberalism and modern liberalism. She takes pains to explain these distinctions and how our understanding of liberalism has also contributed to some of the shifts and adjustments that have transpired. What does become clear in all of the case studies and details is that this is really a story about the United States Congress—not the Judiciary—and that Congress has been responsible for many of these changes, even if these actions seem to elide public attention and scrutiny. In fact, it is very difficult to detect Congress's role in these instances, where Congress acted to essentially remove the Judiciary's powers to deliberate in these policy realms. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is about corporate identity politics, and the ways in which corporations worked to fend off regulatory reform, while not exactly using the expected pathways. Since corporations, unlike, say women or African Americans, do not have a history of exclusion or disadvantage within the American political or economic systems, the concept of corporate identity politics seems a bit odd, but Frydl makes a strong case for this understanding, through the case studies of Catholic hospitals and regulatory reform that provides an avenue towards allowing for more religious freedoms and protections for the hospitals themselves; the legislative reforms with regard to criminal codes in the 1970s and 1980s that instituted harsher sentencing guidelines for individuals but much more lax responses to corporate infractions; and finally in a comparative study of corporate speech regulation and speech regulation of labor unions in the United States. Frydl tells the story from all perspectives and dimensions, including who was working behind the scenes to move these protections forward over the past fifty years. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is a very important analysis of the strengthening of the position of corporate entities within the political, legal, and economic systems in the United States. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She is also author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not In My District (Peter Lang Publishers, 2003). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of the American political system. This is a deeply and thoroughly researched book, with details and information coming from legal decisions, law review articles, political theory, congressional acts, federal government notices, historical data and understanding, medical information, and texts in political science, sociology, and economics. It is indeed a tour de force, but the reader doesn't really notice because it is such a propulsive and captivating narrative about how modern private corporations learned to capture and implement the advocacy practices that the social movements of the postwar period were using to make gains for previously disadvantaged groups (like African Americans, women, those with disabilities, and more). Frydl lays out the foundation for the analysis within the framework of liberalism, classical liberalism and modern liberalism. She takes pains to explain these distinctions and how our understanding of liberalism has also contributed to some of the shifts and adjustments that have transpired. What does become clear in all of the case studies and details is that this is really a story about the United States Congress—not the Judiciary—and that Congress has been responsible for many of these changes, even if these actions seem to elide public attention and scrutiny. In fact, it is very difficult to detect Congress's role in these instances, where Congress acted to essentially remove the Judiciary's powers to deliberate in these policy realms. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is about corporate identity politics, and the ways in which corporations worked to fend off regulatory reform, while not exactly using the expected pathways. Since corporations, unlike, say women or African Americans, do not have a history of exclusion or disadvantage within the American political or economic systems, the concept of corporate identity politics seems a bit odd, but Frydl makes a strong case for this understanding, through the case studies of Catholic hospitals and regulatory reform that provides an avenue towards allowing for more religious freedoms and protections for the hospitals themselves; the legislative reforms with regard to criminal codes in the 1970s and 1980s that instituted harsher sentencing guidelines for individuals but much more lax responses to corporate infractions; and finally in a comparative study of corporate speech regulation and speech regulation of labor unions in the United States. Frydl tells the story from all perspectives and dimensions, including who was working behind the scenes to move these protections forward over the past fifty years. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is a very important analysis of the strengthening of the position of corporate entities within the political, legal, and economic systems in the United States. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She is also author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not In My District (Peter Lang Publishers, 2003). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of the American political system. This is a deeply and thoroughly researched book, with details and information coming from legal decisions, law review articles, political theory, congressional acts, federal government notices, historical data and understanding, medical information, and texts in political science, sociology, and economics. It is indeed a tour de force, but the reader doesn't really notice because it is such a propulsive and captivating narrative about how modern private corporations learned to capture and implement the advocacy practices that the social movements of the postwar period were using to make gains for previously disadvantaged groups (like African Americans, women, those with disabilities, and more). Frydl lays out the foundation for the analysis within the framework of liberalism, classical liberalism and modern liberalism. She takes pains to explain these distinctions and how our understanding of liberalism has also contributed to some of the shifts and adjustments that have transpired. What does become clear in all of the case studies and details is that this is really a story about the United States Congress—not the Judiciary—and that Congress has been responsible for many of these changes, even if these actions seem to elide public attention and scrutiny. In fact, it is very difficult to detect Congress's role in these instances, where Congress acted to essentially remove the Judiciary's powers to deliberate in these policy realms. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is about corporate identity politics, and the ways in which corporations worked to fend off regulatory reform, while not exactly using the expected pathways. Since corporations, unlike, say women or African Americans, do not have a history of exclusion or disadvantage within the American political or economic systems, the concept of corporate identity politics seems a bit odd, but Frydl makes a strong case for this understanding, through the case studies of Catholic hospitals and regulatory reform that provides an avenue towards allowing for more religious freedoms and protections for the hospitals themselves; the legislative reforms with regard to criminal codes in the 1970s and 1980s that instituted harsher sentencing guidelines for individuals but much more lax responses to corporate infractions; and finally in a comparative study of corporate speech regulation and speech regulation of labor unions in the United States. Frydl tells the story from all perspectives and dimensions, including who was working behind the scenes to move these protections forward over the past fifty years. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation is a very important analysis of the strengthening of the position of corporate entities within the political, legal, and economic systems in the United States. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She is also author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not In My District (Peter Lang Publishers, 2003). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

The Bartered Bride, a comic opera by Bedrich Smetana, premiered in Prague on March 30, 1866. Its pastoral love story and setting in a rural Czech village eventually became an enduring symbol of Czech nationalism. In Visions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera (Oxford University Press, 2025), Christopher Campo-Bowen examines how a particular image of the rural village in a set of Czech operas written between 1866 and 1904 became a powerful signifier for Czech ethnoracial and nationalist identity. He follows this conception of Czech identity and its entanglement with opera through the political changes in the years when the Czech lands were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the upheaval that followed when the Empire collapsed in 1918 and the First Czechoslovak Republic was founded. In addition to composers and their operas, Campo-Bowen investigates the output of critics, administrators, and other urban intellectuals to understand the impact of village operas on public discourse. By setting his analysis within a discussion of how race was understood in nineteenth-century Europe, Campo-Bowen shows that this seemingly straightforward nationalist discourse was shot through with racialized essentialism and ideas about gender that were connected with larger political realities. He ends the book with a discussion of the resonances of this nineteenth-century conception of Czech identity in the current Czech Republic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today's guest, Caro Pirri, is the author of Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement (Oxford University Press, 2025). This book explores how early modern colonial travel writing informed the London theater's spatial and placemaking conventions. It suggests that what the stage found most compelling about narratives of colonial settlement was their failure to claim interpretive control over unfamiliar places and people. The book goes on to link colonial misreadings of places and people to theatrical strategies for staging disorientation, which Pirri characterizes as a condition of “unsettlement.” Each chapter focuses on a specific formal device that emerged from colonial misreadings: “uncommonplacing” in Richard Hakluyt's travel compendium; metonymic possession in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine; “seasoning” in Ben Jonson's city comedies; “stagewreck” in Shakespeare's The Tempest; and “stagework” in the Lord Mayor's Shows. By approaching form as an interpretive process that is always engaged in the act of making and being made, Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form offers a model for reading past the seeming impasses of colonial narratives. It shows how narratives of failed settlement served as a productive resources for the formal worldmaking conventions of early modern theater. Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today's guest, Caro Pirri, is the author of Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement (Oxford University Press, 2025). This book explores how early modern colonial travel writing informed the London theater's spatial and placemaking conventions. It suggests that what the stage found most compelling about narratives of colonial settlement was their failure to claim interpretive control over unfamiliar places and people. The book goes on to link colonial misreadings of places and people to theatrical strategies for staging disorientation, which Pirri characterizes as a condition of “unsettlement.” Each chapter focuses on a specific formal device that emerged from colonial misreadings: “uncommonplacing” in Richard Hakluyt's travel compendium; metonymic possession in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine; “seasoning” in Ben Jonson's city comedies; “stagewreck” in Shakespeare's The Tempest; and “stagework” in the Lord Mayor's Shows. By approaching form as an interpretive process that is always engaged in the act of making and being made, Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form offers a model for reading past the seeming impasses of colonial narratives. It shows how narratives of failed settlement served as a productive resources for the formal worldmaking conventions of early modern theater. Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

The Bartered Bride, a comic opera by Bedrich Smetana, premiered in Prague on March 30, 1866. Its pastoral love story and setting in a rural Czech village eventually became an enduring symbol of Czech nationalism. In Visions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera (Oxford University Press, 2025), Christopher Campo-Bowen examines how a particular image of the rural village in a set of Czech operas written between 1866 and 1904 became a powerful signifier for Czech ethnoracial and nationalist identity. He follows this conception of Czech identity and its entanglement with opera through the political changes in the years when the Czech lands were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the upheaval that followed when the Empire collapsed in 1918 and the First Czechoslovak Republic was founded. In addition to composers and their operas, Campo-Bowen investigates the output of critics, administrators, and other urban intellectuals to understand the impact of village operas on public discourse. By setting his analysis within a discussion of how race was understood in nineteenth-century Europe, Campo-Bowen shows that this seemingly straightforward nationalist discourse was shot through with racialized essentialism and ideas about gender that were connected with larger political realities. He ends the book with a discussion of the resonances of this nineteenth-century conception of Czech identity in the current Czech Republic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Today's guest, Caro Pirri, is the author of Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement (Oxford University Press, 2025). This book explores how early modern colonial travel writing informed the London theater's spatial and placemaking conventions. It suggests that what the stage found most compelling about narratives of colonial settlement was their failure to claim interpretive control over unfamiliar places and people. The book goes on to link colonial misreadings of places and people to theatrical strategies for staging disorientation, which Pirri characterizes as a condition of “unsettlement.” Each chapter focuses on a specific formal device that emerged from colonial misreadings: “uncommonplacing” in Richard Hakluyt's travel compendium; metonymic possession in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine; “seasoning” in Ben Jonson's city comedies; “stagewreck” in Shakespeare's The Tempest; and “stagework” in the Lord Mayor's Shows. By approaching form as an interpretive process that is always engaged in the act of making and being made, Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form offers a model for reading past the seeming impasses of colonial narratives. It shows how narratives of failed settlement served as a productive resources for the formal worldmaking conventions of early modern theater. Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Today's guest, Caro Pirri, is the author of Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form in Early Modern England: Stages of Unsettlement (Oxford University Press, 2025). This book explores how early modern colonial travel writing informed the London theater's spatial and placemaking conventions. It suggests that what the stage found most compelling about narratives of colonial settlement was their failure to claim interpretive control over unfamiliar places and people. The book goes on to link colonial misreadings of places and people to theatrical strategies for staging disorientation, which Pirri characterizes as a condition of “unsettlement.” Each chapter focuses on a specific formal device that emerged from colonial misreadings: “uncommonplacing” in Richard Hakluyt's travel compendium; metonymic possession in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine; “seasoning” in Ben Jonson's city comedies; “stagewreck” in Shakespeare's The Tempest; and “stagework” in the Lord Mayor's Shows. By approaching form as an interpretive process that is always engaged in the act of making and being made, Colonial Failure and Theatrical Form offers a model for reading past the seeming impasses of colonial narratives. It shows how narratives of failed settlement served as a productive resources for the formal worldmaking conventions of early modern theater. Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bartered Bride, a comic opera by Bedrich Smetana, premiered in Prague on March 30, 1866. Its pastoral love story and setting in a rural Czech village eventually became an enduring symbol of Czech nationalism. In Visions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera (Oxford University Press, 2025), Christopher Campo-Bowen examines how a particular image of the rural village in a set of Czech operas written between 1866 and 1904 became a powerful signifier for Czech ethnoracial and nationalist identity. He follows this conception of Czech identity and its entanglement with opera through the political changes in the years when the Czech lands were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the upheaval that followed when the Empire collapsed in 1918 and the First Czechoslovak Republic was founded. In addition to composers and their operas, Campo-Bowen investigates the output of critics, administrators, and other urban intellectuals to understand the impact of village operas on public discourse. By setting his analysis within a discussion of how race was understood in nineteenth-century Europe, Campo-Bowen shows that this seemingly straightforward nationalist discourse was shot through with racialized essentialism and ideas about gender that were connected with larger political realities. He ends the book with a discussion of the resonances of this nineteenth-century conception of Czech identity in the current Czech Republic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

The Bartered Bride, a comic opera by Bedrich Smetana, premiered in Prague on March 30, 1866. Its pastoral love story and setting in a rural Czech village eventually became an enduring symbol of Czech nationalism. In Visions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera (Oxford University Press, 2025), Christopher Campo-Bowen examines how a particular image of the rural village in a set of Czech operas written between 1866 and 1904 became a powerful signifier for Czech ethnoracial and nationalist identity. He follows this conception of Czech identity and its entanglement with opera through the political changes in the years when the Czech lands were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the upheaval that followed when the Empire collapsed in 1918 and the First Czechoslovak Republic was founded. In addition to composers and their operas, Campo-Bowen investigates the output of critics, administrators, and other urban intellectuals to understand the impact of village operas on public discourse. By setting his analysis within a discussion of how race was understood in nineteenth-century Europe, Campo-Bowen shows that this seemingly straightforward nationalist discourse was shot through with racialized essentialism and ideas about gender that were connected with larger political realities. He ends the book with a discussion of the resonances of this nineteenth-century conception of Czech identity in the current Czech Republic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

In The Patty Duke Show and the American Sixties: Hot Dogs and Crêpes Suzette (Oxford UP, 2026), the first ever published on The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), Caryl Flinn and Dana Polan examine the significance of this classic US sitcom within popular culture and within American society at the time. Child acting sensation Patty Duke plays the all-American Patty as well as her staid British counterpart Cathy, who comes to live with Patty's family in Brooklyn. Far from being a frivolous show, the show's use of twin girls--and their comic antics--offers glimpses into different identities and possibilities to try on, in keeping not only with girls' popular culture of the time but the optimism of John F. Kennedy's Camelot years.At the same time, the series plugged into many of the contradictions of the mid-1960s. It flirted, as much of the US did, with foreign cultures, such as Julia Child's mediation of Frenchness, only to return to and reaffirm core US values. Like Kennedy, who encouraged the country's youth to engage with the world at large, the show gestures towards a cosmopolitanism that, ultimately, retreats into an American-based perspective, as evidenced in the series' preferential treatment of Patty over Cathy--despite the two characters being played by one actor.Drawing on archival research, Flinn and Polan bring to light the show's production background, which has until now been largely lost to history, as well as considering the series's conception, reception, its many tie-in products, and its ongoing afterlife in the decades since its initial broadcast. In so doing, they reveal hidden and overt issues that shaped American culture and ideology of the 1960s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In The Patty Duke Show and the American Sixties: Hot Dogs and Crêpes Suzette (Oxford UP, 2026), the first ever published on The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), Caryl Flinn and Dana Polan examine the significance of this classic US sitcom within popular culture and within American society at the time. Child acting sensation Patty Duke plays the all-American Patty as well as her staid British counterpart Cathy, who comes to live with Patty's family in Brooklyn. Far from being a frivolous show, the show's use of twin girls--and their comic antics--offers glimpses into different identities and possibilities to try on, in keeping not only with girls' popular culture of the time but the optimism of John F. Kennedy's Camelot years.At the same time, the series plugged into many of the contradictions of the mid-1960s. It flirted, as much of the US did, with foreign cultures, such as Julia Child's mediation of Frenchness, only to return to and reaffirm core US values. Like Kennedy, who encouraged the country's youth to engage with the world at large, the show gestures towards a cosmopolitanism that, ultimately, retreats into an American-based perspective, as evidenced in the series' preferential treatment of Patty over Cathy--despite the two characters being played by one actor.Drawing on archival research, Flinn and Polan bring to light the show's production background, which has until now been largely lost to history, as well as considering the series's conception, reception, its many tie-in products, and its ongoing afterlife in the decades since its initial broadcast. In so doing, they reveal hidden and overt issues that shaped American culture and ideology of the 1960s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

In The Patty Duke Show and the American Sixties: Hot Dogs and Crêpes Suzette (Oxford UP, 2026), the first ever published on The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), Caryl Flinn and Dana Polan examine the significance of this classic US sitcom within popular culture and within American society at the time. Child acting sensation Patty Duke plays the all-American Patty as well as her staid British counterpart Cathy, who comes to live with Patty's family in Brooklyn. Far from being a frivolous show, the show's use of twin girls--and their comic antics--offers glimpses into different identities and possibilities to try on, in keeping not only with girls' popular culture of the time but the optimism of John F. Kennedy's Camelot years.At the same time, the series plugged into many of the contradictions of the mid-1960s. It flirted, as much of the US did, with foreign cultures, such as Julia Child's mediation of Frenchness, only to return to and reaffirm core US values. Like Kennedy, who encouraged the country's youth to engage with the world at large, the show gestures towards a cosmopolitanism that, ultimately, retreats into an American-based perspective, as evidenced in the series' preferential treatment of Patty over Cathy--despite the two characters being played by one actor.Drawing on archival research, Flinn and Polan bring to light the show's production background, which has until now been largely lost to history, as well as considering the series's conception, reception, its many tie-in products, and its ongoing afterlife in the decades since its initial broadcast. In so doing, they reveal hidden and overt issues that shaped American culture and ideology of the 1960s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In The Patty Duke Show and the American Sixties: Hot Dogs and Crêpes Suzette (Oxford UP, 2026), the first ever published on The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), Caryl Flinn and Dana Polan examine the significance of this classic US sitcom within popular culture and within American society at the time. Child acting sensation Patty Duke plays the all-American Patty as well as her staid British counterpart Cathy, who comes to live with Patty's family in Brooklyn. Far from being a frivolous show, the show's use of twin girls--and their comic antics--offers glimpses into different identities and possibilities to try on, in keeping not only with girls' popular culture of the time but the optimism of John F. Kennedy's Camelot years.At the same time, the series plugged into many of the contradictions of the mid-1960s. It flirted, as much of the US did, with foreign cultures, such as Julia Child's mediation of Frenchness, only to return to and reaffirm core US values. Like Kennedy, who encouraged the country's youth to engage with the world at large, the show gestures towards a cosmopolitanism that, ultimately, retreats into an American-based perspective, as evidenced in the series' preferential treatment of Patty over Cathy--despite the two characters being played by one actor.Drawing on archival research, Flinn and Polan bring to light the show's production background, which has until now been largely lost to history, as well as considering the series's conception, reception, its many tie-in products, and its ongoing afterlife in the decades since its initial broadcast. In so doing, they reveal hidden and overt issues that shaped American culture and ideology of the 1960s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

In The Patty Duke Show and the American Sixties: Hot Dogs and Crêpes Suzette (Oxford UP, 2026), the first ever published on The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), Caryl Flinn and Dana Polan examine the significance of this classic US sitcom within popular culture and within American society at the time. Child acting sensation Patty Duke plays the all-American Patty as well as her staid British counterpart Cathy, who comes to live with Patty's family in Brooklyn. Far from being a frivolous show, the show's use of twin girls--and their comic antics--offers glimpses into different identities and possibilities to try on, in keeping not only with girls' popular culture of the time but the optimism of John F. Kennedy's Camelot years.At the same time, the series plugged into many of the contradictions of the mid-1960s. It flirted, as much of the US did, with foreign cultures, such as Julia Child's mediation of Frenchness, only to return to and reaffirm core US values. Like Kennedy, who encouraged the country's youth to engage with the world at large, the show gestures towards a cosmopolitanism that, ultimately, retreats into an American-based perspective, as evidenced in the series' preferential treatment of Patty over Cathy--despite the two characters being played by one actor.Drawing on archival research, Flinn and Polan bring to light the show's production background, which has until now been largely lost to history, as well as considering the series's conception, reception, its many tie-in products, and its ongoing afterlife in the decades since its initial broadcast. In so doing, they reveal hidden and overt issues that shaped American culture and ideology of the 1960s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

What does it really mean to go "beyond the letter of the law"? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with scholar Deborah Barer to discuss her book Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud, which offers a surprising new interpretation of one of the Talmud's most enduring ethical concepts: lifnim mi-shurat ha-din. For generations, lifnim mi-shurat ha-din has been understood to mean acting "beyond the letter of the law"—choosing generosity or compassion over strict legal obligation. Barer challenges that assumption. Through a close reading of classical rabbinic texts, she argues that the Talmud originally used the phrase not to describe a particular kind of moral act, but a particular way of making decisions. Rather than rigidly following established rules, rabbis sometimes improvised, departing from expected patterns in pursuit of the right outcome for a unique case. By tracing how this idea developed from in the Talmud, Barer uncovers how one phrase evolved into a cornerstone of Jewish ethical thought. Her work invites readers to rethink the relationship between law and morality, showing that creativity and flexibility have always been part of the rabbinic legal tradition. Together, Barer and Katz explore why improvisation matters in Jewish law, how the Talmud balances consistency with compassion, and what this ancient model of decision-making can teach us about navigating difficult moral questions today. Deborah Barer is Senior Faculty with the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, with an emphasis on rabbinic literature and Jewish ethics. Previously, she was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Towson University, and she has also taught at Oberlin College and for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies (North America). She served as the editor of the Journal of Textual Reasoning. Rabbi Marc Katz is the senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with sections of India's vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has grown over many decades. Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism (Oxford University Press, 2024) explores how and why the movement became popular among India's diaspora from the second half of the twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology and its plethora of organizations have a distinctive resonance and way of operating overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular functions for diaspora communities.Edward T.G. Anderson argues that transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various minority communities. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard' as well as ‘soft' power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

What does it really mean to go "beyond the letter of the law"? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with scholar Deborah Barer to discuss her book Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud, which offers a surprising new interpretation of one of the Talmud's most enduring ethical concepts: lifnim mi-shurat ha-din. For generations, lifnim mi-shurat ha-din has been understood to mean acting "beyond the letter of the law"—choosing generosity or compassion over strict legal obligation. Barer challenges that assumption. Through a close reading of classical rabbinic texts, she argues that the Talmud originally used the phrase not to describe a particular kind of moral act, but a particular way of making decisions. Rather than rigidly following established rules, rabbis sometimes improvised, departing from expected patterns in pursuit of the right outcome for a unique case. By tracing how this idea developed from in the Talmud, Barer uncovers how one phrase evolved into a cornerstone of Jewish ethical thought. Her work invites readers to rethink the relationship between law and morality, showing that creativity and flexibility have always been part of the rabbinic legal tradition. Together, Barer and Katz explore why improvisation matters in Jewish law, how the Talmud balances consistency with compassion, and what this ancient model of decision-making can teach us about navigating difficult moral questions today. Deborah Barer is Senior Faculty with the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, with an emphasis on rabbinic literature and Jewish ethics. Previously, she was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Towson University, and she has also taught at Oberlin College and for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies (North America). She served as the editor of the Journal of Textual Reasoning. Rabbi Marc Katz is the senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

What does it really mean to go "beyond the letter of the law"? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with scholar Deborah Barer to discuss her book Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud, which offers a surprising new interpretation of one of the Talmud's most enduring ethical concepts: lifnim mi-shurat ha-din. For generations, lifnim mi-shurat ha-din has been understood to mean acting "beyond the letter of the law"—choosing generosity or compassion over strict legal obligation. Barer challenges that assumption. Through a close reading of classical rabbinic texts, she argues that the Talmud originally used the phrase not to describe a particular kind of moral act, but a particular way of making decisions. Rather than rigidly following established rules, rabbis sometimes improvised, departing from expected patterns in pursuit of the right outcome for a unique case. By tracing how this idea developed from in the Talmud, Barer uncovers how one phrase evolved into a cornerstone of Jewish ethical thought. Her work invites readers to rethink the relationship between law and morality, showing that creativity and flexibility have always been part of the rabbinic legal tradition. Together, Barer and Katz explore why improvisation matters in Jewish law, how the Talmud balances consistency with compassion, and what this ancient model of decision-making can teach us about navigating difficult moral questions today. Deborah Barer is Senior Faculty with the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, with an emphasis on rabbinic literature and Jewish ethics. Previously, she was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Towson University, and she has also taught at Oberlin College and for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies (North America). She served as the editor of the Journal of Textual Reasoning. Rabbi Marc Katz is the senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with sections of India's vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has grown over many decades. Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism (Oxford University Press, 2024) explores how and why the movement became popular among India's diaspora from the second half of the twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology and its plethora of organizations have a distinctive resonance and way of operating overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular functions for diaspora communities.Edward T.G. Anderson argues that transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various minority communities. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard' as well as ‘soft' power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with sections of India's vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has grown over many decades. Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism (Oxford University Press, 2024) explores how and why the movement became popular among India's diaspora from the second half of the twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology and its plethora of organizations have a distinctive resonance and way of operating overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular functions for diaspora communities.Edward T.G. Anderson argues that transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various minority communities. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard' as well as ‘soft' power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

What does it really mean to go "beyond the letter of the law"? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with scholar Deborah Barer to discuss her book Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud, which offers a surprising new interpretation of one of the Talmud's most enduring ethical concepts: lifnim mi-shurat ha-din. For generations, lifnim mi-shurat ha-din has been understood to mean acting "beyond the letter of the law"—choosing generosity or compassion over strict legal obligation. Barer challenges that assumption. Through a close reading of classical rabbinic texts, she argues that the Talmud originally used the phrase not to describe a particular kind of moral act, but a particular way of making decisions. Rather than rigidly following established rules, rabbis sometimes improvised, departing from expected patterns in pursuit of the right outcome for a unique case. By tracing how this idea developed from in the Talmud, Barer uncovers how one phrase evolved into a cornerstone of Jewish ethical thought. Her work invites readers to rethink the relationship between law and morality, showing that creativity and flexibility have always been part of the rabbinic legal tradition. Together, Barer and Katz explore why improvisation matters in Jewish law, how the Talmud balances consistency with compassion, and what this ancient model of decision-making can teach us about navigating difficult moral questions today. Deborah Barer is Senior Faculty with the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, with an emphasis on rabbinic literature and Jewish ethics. Previously, she was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Towson University, and she has also taught at Oberlin College and for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies (North America). She served as the editor of the Journal of Textual Reasoning. Rabbi Marc Katz is the senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with sections of India's vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has grown over many decades. Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism (Oxford University Press, 2024) explores how and why the movement became popular among India's diaspora from the second half of the twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology and its plethora of organizations have a distinctive resonance and way of operating overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular functions for diaspora communities.Edward T.G. Anderson argues that transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various minority communities. Sachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard' as well as ‘soft' power domains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

The Swasthani Vrata Katha is the most widely read, recited, and listened to Hindu devotional text, especially of local indigenous origin, among Hindu laity in Nepal. Dedicated to and itself the physical embodiment of a local goddess named Swasthani, Nepali Hindus recite the Swasthani every year from cover to cover over the winter month of Magh (January–February). It is a collection of widely circulating Hindu myths about gods, demons, and divine dalliances that forefront Shiva, Sati, and Parvati but it is also a local folk story about women's real, everyday hardships and the rewards of attending to one's dharma and devotion to the goddess Swasthani. The Swasthani Vrata Katha: A Secret Vow to the Goddess (Oxford UP, 2026) is the first full-length English translation of the Swasthanifrom the original Nepali. Just like Parvati made Swasthani and her story known beyond the realm of the gods to the human realm, so, too, this translation makes them known beyond Nepal to a broad English-speaking audience. Open Access: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Swasthani Vrata Katha is the most widely read, recited, and listened to Hindu devotional text, especially of local indigenous origin, among Hindu laity in Nepal. Dedicated to and itself the physical embodiment of a local goddess named Swasthani, Nepali Hindus recite the Swasthani every year from cover to cover over the winter month of Magh (January–February). It is a collection of widely circulating Hindu myths about gods, demons, and divine dalliances that forefront Shiva, Sati, and Parvati but it is also a local folk story about women's real, everyday hardships and the rewards of attending to one's dharma and devotion to the goddess Swasthani. The Swasthani Vrata Katha: A Secret Vow to the Goddess (Oxford UP, 2026) is the first full-length English translation of the Swasthanifrom the original Nepali. Just like Parvati made Swasthani and her story known beyond the realm of the gods to the human realm, so, too, this translation makes them known beyond Nepal to a broad English-speaking audience. Open Access: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The Swasthani Vrata Katha is the most widely read, recited, and listened to Hindu devotional text, especially of local indigenous origin, among Hindu laity in Nepal. Dedicated to and itself the physical embodiment of a local goddess named Swasthani, Nepali Hindus recite the Swasthani every year from cover to cover over the winter month of Magh (January–February). It is a collection of widely circulating Hindu myths about gods, demons, and divine dalliances that forefront Shiva, Sati, and Parvati but it is also a local folk story about women's real, everyday hardships and the rewards of attending to one's dharma and devotion to the goddess Swasthani. The Swasthani Vrata Katha: A Secret Vow to the Goddess (Oxford UP, 2026) is the first full-length English translation of the Swasthanifrom the original Nepali. Just like Parvati made Swasthani and her story known beyond the realm of the gods to the human realm, so, too, this translation makes them known beyond Nepal to a broad English-speaking audience. Open Access: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Amy Weitzman interviews Emily Sneff on her new book When the Declaration of Independence Was News and the graduate school experience. In 1776 people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public squares and could read it in the pages of their local newspapers. Stories of the Declaration typically recount the work that took place inside the Continental Congress, focusing on the men tasked with drafting the text. Although Congress declared independence, the work of spreading the news involved printers, post riders, ship captains, civic leaders, soldiers, clerks, orators, preachers, diplomats, and translators. When the Declaration of Independence Was News reveals the stories behind how the Declaration was communicated in the United States and around the Atlantic. Tracing the travels of the founding document of the United States from Philadelphia to New York, Boston, Charleston, London, Leiden, Paris, and beyond, Emily Sneff shows how people both celebrated the Declaration and critiqued it. In the weeks after the document was penned, it was printed in the columns of newspapers, translated into German and French, and shared with Native American allies. The document induced some people to make public their privately held beliefs about whether they wanted the United States to be independent or to reconcile with King George III. The Declaration was met with unique circumstances everywhere it went, and people modified the text along the way. The questions of who experienced the news of independence, when, and how reveal an expansive and complex history of a critical moment in the American Revolution. Published for the 250th anniversary of American independence, When the Declaration of Independence Was News returns to a time before the legacy of these words and the outcome of the war against Great Britain were known to reconsider what the founding of the United States meant to the people who were living through it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Amy Weitzman interviews Emily Sneff on her new book When the Declaration of Independence Was News and the graduate school experience. In 1776 people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public squares and could read it in the pages of their local newspapers. Stories of the Declaration typically recount the work that took place inside the Continental Congress, focusing on the men tasked with drafting the text. Although Congress declared independence, the work of spreading the news involved printers, post riders, ship captains, civic leaders, soldiers, clerks, orators, preachers, diplomats, and translators. When the Declaration of Independence Was News reveals the stories behind how the Declaration was communicated in the United States and around the Atlantic. Tracing the travels of the founding document of the United States from Philadelphia to New York, Boston, Charleston, London, Leiden, Paris, and beyond, Emily Sneff shows how people both celebrated the Declaration and critiqued it. In the weeks after the document was penned, it was printed in the columns of newspapers, translated into German and French, and shared with Native American allies. The document induced some people to make public their privately held beliefs about whether they wanted the United States to be independent or to reconcile with King George III. The Declaration was met with unique circumstances everywhere it went, and people modified the text along the way. The questions of who experienced the news of independence, when, and how reveal an expansive and complex history of a critical moment in the American Revolution. Published for the 250th anniversary of American independence, When the Declaration of Independence Was News returns to a time before the legacy of these words and the outcome of the war against Great Britain were known to reconsider what the founding of the United States meant to the people who were living through it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Rock 'n' roll appeared in the 1950s as the high-energy, electrically amplified music of young dancers and listeners, first in the United States and then around the globe, and from the beginning it symbolized more than music. First popularized as a marketing rubric to sell African-American rhythm and blues to white teenagers, it stood for racial integration, sexual freedom, youthful rebellion, and for change and modernity. It was never a single kind of music, and historians disagree about when it began and which artists or records should be included in its canon--but it was always a flashpoint, whether condemned as an assault on cultural standards or hailed as the most exciting movement of the twentieth century. Rock ‘N' Roll: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2026) explores the complex musical styles and evolutions of the genre and also examines it as product, symbol, and vehicle of societal change. The introduction seamlessly integrates the genre with elements of 1955-1965's mass influence including the rise of television and niche radio formats, the civil rights movement, a new concept of "teenagers" as a unique age group, and a sexual revolution. Rock 'n' Roll traces the rise and trajectories of the styles and musicians grouped as rock 'n' roll and their journey to becoming emblems of much more Elijah Wald is a Grammy winning writer, musician, and historian. His books include Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues; How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music; Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories; The Mayor of MacDougal Street (source for the movie Inside Llewyn Davis); and Dylan Goes Electric! (source for the movie A Complete Unknown). He has taught at various universities and holds a PhD in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics. Elijah Wald's website. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network