Germán Campos Muñoz, The Classics in South America: Five Case Studies (Bloomsbury, 2021) examines the long and complex history of the Greco-Roman tradition in South America, arguing that the Classics have played a crucial, though often overlooked, role in the self-definition in the New World. Chronicling and theorizing this history through a detailed analysi ... Show More
Apr 6
Alex Diamond, "Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia's Peace Laboratory" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
The Colombian village of Briceño might, at first glimpse, look like many communities in the rural Global South. Many of the people living there rely on small-scale farming, even as a newly constructed hydroelectric dam threatens traditional livelihoods. Yet after decades where Br ... Show More
1h 4m
Apr 2
Amelia Frank-Vitale, "Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds" (U California Press, 2026)
The consequences of U.S. border policies through the experiences of Honduran migrants. Hondurans have been at the heart of some of the most visible migration phenomena in the last few years, as well as the direct target of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy. In Leave If You Can: ... Show More
38m 44s
Jul 2023
Vivian Nun Halloran, "Caribbean American Narratives of Belonging" (Ohio State UP, 2023)
In Caribbean American Narratives of Belonging (Ohio State University Press, 2023), Vivian Nun Halloran analyzes memoirs, picture books, comic books, young adult novels, musicals, and television shows through which Caribbean Americans recount and celebrate their contributions to c ... Show More
1h 20m
Oct 2021
Hongjian Wang, "Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture: A Comparative and Literary-Historical Reevaluation" (Cambria Press, 2020)
European Decadence, a controversial artistic movement that flourished mainly in late-nineteenth-century France and Britain, has inspired several generations of Chinese writers and literary scholars since it was introduced to China in the early 1920s. Translated into Chinese as tu ... Show More
1h 26m
Mar 2023
Jessica Brantley, "Medieval English Manuscripts and Literary Forms" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
Today’s guest is Jessica Brantley, Professor of English at Yale University. Professor Rosenberg is the author of the previous monograph, Reading in the Wilderness, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2007. Her articles have appeared in PMLA, Exemplaria, and the Journa ... Show More
49m 52s
Dec 2023
Trent Masiki, "The Afro-Latino Memoir: Race, Ethnicity, and Literary Interculturalism" (UNC Press, 2023)
Despite their literary and cultural significance, Afro-Latino memoirs have been marginalized in both Latino and African American studies. Trent Masiki remedies this problem by bringing critical attention to the understudied African American influences in Afro-Latino memoirs publi ... Show More
35m 6s
Aug 2021
Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, "ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters Along the Silk Roads" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
There's been a lot of resurgent interest in the Silk Routes lately, particularly looking at the cultural, political, and economic connections between "East" and "West" that challenge long held narratives of a world that only became interconnected in the last half millennium. Even ... Show More
56m 43s
May 2014
Marwa Elshakry, “Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
The work of Charles Darwin, together with the writing of associated scholars of society and its organs and organisms, had a particularly global reach in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Marwa Elshakry‘s new book offers a fascinating window into the ways that thi ... Show More
59m 49s
Sep 2023
Michelle Karnes, "Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Marvels like enchanted rings and sorcerers’ stones were topics of fascination in the Middle Ages, not only in romance and travel literature but also in the period’s philosophical writing. Rather than constructions of belief accepted only by simple-minded people, Michelle Karnes s ... Show More
31m 24s