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 shows that these spectacular wonders were near impossibilities that demanded scru ... Show More
Aug 20
David Commins, "Saudi Arabia: A Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)
A major new history of Saudi Arabia, from its eighteenth-century origins to the present day Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a major player on the international stage and the site of Islam’s two holiest cities. It is also one of the world’s only absol ... Show More
29m 8s
Aug 16
Adriana Carranca, "Soul by Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims" (Columbia UP, 2024)
US-born Protestant evangelicalism has gone global to an extent of which many of us might be unaware. Soul by Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims (Columbia Global Reports, 2024) tells the story of Americans’ colossal mobilization to proclaim Christianity ... Show More
55m 37s
Jun 2020
Lara Harb, "Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Lara Harb’s Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is a delightful and formidable study on the details and development of poetics and aesthetics in medieval Arabic literature. The central theme of this splendid book ... Show More
1h 4m
Jul 2021
Germán Campos Muñoz, "The Classics in South America: Five Case Studies" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
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 t ... Show More
1h 36m
Nov 2021
Katarzyna Bartoszyńska, "Estranging the Novel: Poland, Ireland, and Theories of World Literature" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
Katarzyna (Kasia) Bartoszyńska is an assistant professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Ithaca College. Her research and teaching focuses on the novel form and the theories connected to it, combining a formalist investigation of textual mechanics with an interest in ... Show More
31m 39s
May 2021
Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi, "The Translator of Desires: Poems" (Princeton UP, 2021)
In this ground-breaking work, Michael Sells (the Barrows Professor Emeritus of the History and Literature of Islam and Professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of Chicago) translates sixty-one poems that form the Tarjuman al-ashwaq or The Translator of Desir ... Show More
1h 6m
Feb 2023
Marnia Lazreg, "Foucault's Orient: The Conundrum of Cultural Difference, From Tunisia to Japan" (Berghahn Books, 2020)
Foucault lived in Tunisia for two years and travelled to Japan and Iran more than once. Yet throughout his critical scholarship, he insisted that the cultures of the “Orient” constitute the “limit” of Western rationality. Using archival research supplemented by interviews with ke ... Show More
54m 13s
Sep 2023
Religion and Politics in the Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork The Lord of the Rings delighted so many of us as children, yet it and its vast body of accompanying work, such as the Silmarillion, contain a rich depth not well understood by most adults. Tolkien's work reflects his academic interests in the history o ... Show More
1h 2m
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