New Books in Intellectual History

How can the novel be a way to understand the development of nation-state borders? An important work in the intersections of law, literature, history, and migration, Stephanie DeGooyer's Before Borders: A Legal and Literary History of Naturalization (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022) offers fascinating insight into understanding naturalization. Tracing the idea of naturalization as it can be understood as a legal fiction and through literary fiction, DeGooyer offers a compelling approach to understanding naturalization as a generative mechanism for national expansion. Through a careful and engaging analysis that spans from Mary Shelley to court proceedings, De Gooyer's Before Borders is a compelling read that will be of great interest for those interested in histories of migration, creative approaches to studying the state, and ways to approach law through and alongside literature.Stephanie DeGooyer is Assistant Professor and Frank Borden and Barbara Lasater Hanes Fellow in the Department of English & Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina. Her research focuses on the intersections between law and literature.Rine Vieth is an incoming FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow at Université Laval. Interested in how people experience state legal regimes, their research centres around questions of law, migration, gender, and religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Marxism and psychoanalysis have a rich and complicated relationship to one another, with countless figures and books written on the possible intersection of the two. Our guest today, Adrian Johnston, returns to NBN to discuss his own latest entry into the genre, Infinite Greed: The Inhuman Selfishness of Capital (Columbia UP, 2024). While the book does retread some already-covered territory, Johnston’s book stands out as a unique entry in a crowded field by emphasizing the theoretical overlap of psychoanalytic concepts with the economic core of Marx’s thinking. Libidinal economics are turned into, well, economics and vice-versa in this detailed and rigorously written study that deserves to become one of the canonical texts in the Freudo-Marxist tradition.Adrian Johnston is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico and a faculty member of the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the author of numerous books, including three previously discussed on this podcast; A New German Idealism: Hegel, Zizek and Dialectical Materialism, and Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism volumes one and two. He is also the coeditor, with Slavoj Zizek and Todd McGowan of the book series Diaeresis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Plato is a philosophical writer of unusual and ingenious versatility. His works engage in argument but are also full of allegory, imagery, myth, paradox and intertextuality. He astutely characterises the participants whom he portrays in conversation. Sometimes he composes fictive dialogues in dramatic form while at other times he does so as narratives. In How Plato Writes: Perspectives and Problems (Cambridge UP, 2023), world-renowned scholar Malcolm Schofield illustrates the variety of the literary resources that Plato deploys to achieve his philosophical purposes. He draws key passages for discussion particularly, but not only, from Republic and the less well-known Laws and also shows how reconstructing the original historical context of a dialogue and of its assumed readership is essential to understanding Plato's approach. The book will open the eyes of readers of all levels of expertise to Plato's masterly ability as a writer and how an understanding of this is crucial if we are to appreciate his philosophy.Malcolm Schofield is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy and Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge UniversityMorteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

T&T Clark Handbook of Neo-Calvinism (T&T Clark, 2023) comprehensively demonstrates neo-Calvinism's unique contribution to theology and Christian philosophy. It offers excellent contributions on the movement's most important historical and thematic loci, including its impact on Reformed denominations and churches across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Divided into 3 sections, this handbook first surveys the entire landscape of the neo-Calvinist movement as it pertains to key theological topics. These loci, which range from revelation and Scripture to Christology and theological ethics, show that neo-Calvinist theologies are uniquely modern and yet typically confessional. The second section discusses the influence of key figures from the first and second generation of neo-Calvinist thought, including both principal figures like Abraham Kuyper and lesser known thinkers like August Lecerf. The final section charts the legacy of neo-Calvinism, in non-Dutch geographies, for other sciences, and for the church.Cory Brock is the minister at St Columbas Free Church of Scotland in Edinburgh and part-time lecturer in Systematic Theology and Preaching at Edinburgh Theological Seminary. He is the author of Orthodox Yet Modern: Herman Bavinck's Use of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Lexham Press 2020).Nathaniel Gray Sutanto is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington, USA. He is the author of God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck's Theological Epistemology (T&T Clark, 2020).Brock and Sutanto also coauthored Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Lexham Academic Press 2022). Listeners can find that interview here.Listeners interested in topically related NBN interviews, should listen to Zach McCulley's interview with James Eglinton on Bavinck: A Critical Biography and Justin McGeary's interviews with Bruce Pass on The Heart of Dogmatics: Christology and Christocentrism in Herman Bavinck and On Theology: Herman Bavinck's Theological Orations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In a pathbreaking retelling of the American experience, Aziz Rana shows that today’s reverential constitutional culture is a distinctively twentieth-century phenomenon. Rana connects this widespread idolization to another relatively recent development: the rise of US global dominance. Ultimately, such veneration has had far-reaching consequences: despite offering a unifying language of reform, it has also unleashed an interventionist national security state abroad while undermining the possibility of deeper change at home.Revealing how the current constitutional order was forged over the twentieth century, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them (U Chicago Press, 2024) also sheds light on an array of movement activists—in Black, Indigenous, feminist, labor, and immigrant politics—who struggled to imagine different constitutional horizons. As time passed, these voices of opposition were excised from memory. Today, they offer essential insights that Rana reconstructs to forward an ambitious and comprehensive vision for moving past the constitutional bind.Aziz Rana is a Professor and Provost’s Distinguished Fellow at Boston College Law School and the incoming J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor of Law and Government (beginning 2024).Vatsal Naresh is a Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University. He is the editor of Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism (OUP 2021) and Constituent Assemblies (CUP 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

How does a delivery driver distribute hundreds of packages in a single working day? Why does remote Alaska have such a large airport? Where should we look for elusive serial killers? The answers lie in the crucial connection between maps and maths.In Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers (Pan Macmillan, 2024), Dr Paulina Rowinska embarks on a fascinating journey to discover the mathematical foundations of cartography and cartographical influences on mathematics.From a sixteenth-century map that remains an indispensable navigation tool despite emphasising the North–South divide to public transport maps that both guide and mislead passengers, she reveals how maps and maths shape not only our sense of space and time but also our worldview.Through entertaining stories, surprising real-world examples and a cast of unforgettable characters, Mapmatics helps us to appreciate the mathematical methods and ideas behind maps. And, by illuminating how our world works, leaves us better equipped to understand and look after it.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Nietzsche Now! Now? Really, you might ask. Isn’t he dead already? The Great Immoralist on the vital issues of our time. Hmm, how is that you might ask. Find out in this conversation with Glenn Wallis, returning guest and author of Nietzsche Now! We discuss the role Nietzsche might play today in helping all of us exit the culture war bubble and start to think again. For regular listeners, don’t worry, we do touch on Buddhism too!The Press Release does much of the work in explaining the appeal of this book.‘For readers both acquainted with and new to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche NOW! (Warbler Press, 2024) frames and explains Nietzsche’s thinking on topics of immediate contemporary concern and relevance. Wallis unpacks Nietzsche’s complex philosophy with a deft, empathetic, and brilliantly subtle analysis of the views of the Great Immoralist on democracy, identity, civilization, consciousness, religion, and other momentous topics.Throughout, Wallis includes ample extracts from Nietzsche himself. Rather than skirting what is controversial or editing for easy consumption, Wallis invites readers to exercise a courageous curiosity that yields a rich, nuanced understanding of Nietzsche. He takes readers on a sometimes counterintuitive, always revelatory journey to grasp the relevance of Nietzsche for our contentious times.“Clearly written, relevant accounts are rare in the world of Nietzsche scholarship. Nietzsche NOW! is immensely readable. Our ‘now’ is as pessimistic as Nietzsche’s ‘now’ but Wallis guides us, through Nietzsche's writings, towards coping with the same problems Nietzsche tackled, including truth, democracy, morality, and identity. The same problems but not the same. All now wear modern dress. Wallis’s deep knowledge of Buddhism feeds into the transfigurative nature of the Übermensch, the radical figure who realizes the possibility for personal and social change, the figure whom we can all—why not?—strive to become.”—Sue Prideaux Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Nahj al-Balagha is among the most powerful, consequential, and linguistically brilliant masterpieces of Arabic and of Islamic thought and literature. Based on the orations, letters, and sayings of wisdom of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), the first Imam or successor to Prophet Muhammad in Shi‘i Islam and the fourth caliph in Sunni Islam, this oral treasure was compiled and brought together as a text by the late tenth/early eleventh scholar and poet Al-Sharif al-Radi (d. 1015). In this episode I speak with Professor Tahera Qutbuddin who has provided us with a majestic and brilliant complete English translation of Nahj al-Balagha titled Nahj al-Balāgha: The Wisdom and Eloquence of ‘Alī (Brill, 2024), a parallel English-Arabic text published open access by Brill. The publication of this volume is an event of seismic importance in the study of Islam, religion, and Arabic. Qutbuddin’s translation is animated with the purpose of rendering the Arabic text of Nahj al-Balagha in English in a fashion that amplifies its literary and philosophical potency, a task at which she excels throughout the translation. The experience of reading this translation is nothing short of a deeply moving, philosophically enriching, and linguistically powerful rhapsody. In addition to an eminently user friendly translation with the particular sections and moments of Nahj al-Balagha clearly marked out, Qutbuddin also presents an erudite account of the text’s reception, reception history, and archival density. This outstanding volume will also be a joy to teach and use as primary source material in a range of courses on Islam, religion, Arabic, and the Humanities more broadly.SherAli Tareen is Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His book Defending Muhammad in Modernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies 2020 Book Prize and was selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award. His second book is called Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship after Empire (Columbia University Press, 2023). His other academic publications are available here. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Composed within the first Christian century by a Roman named Hermas, the Shepherd remains a mysterious and underestimated book to scholars and laypeople alike. In The Shepherd of Hermas As Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), Robert D. Heaton argues that early Christians mainly received the Shepherd positively and accepted it unproblematically alongside texts that would ultimately be canonized, requiring decisive actions to exclude it from the late-emerging collection of texts now known as the New Testament. Freshly evaluating the evidence for its popularity in patristic treatises, manuscript recoveries, and Christian material culture, Heaton propounds an interpretation of the Shepherd of Hermas as a book meant to guide his readers toward salvation. Ultimately, Heaton depicts the loss of the Shepherd from the closed catalogue of Christian scriptures as a deliberate constrictive move by the fourth-century Alexandrian bishop Athanasius, who found it useless for his political, theological, and ecclesiological objectives and instead characterized it as a book favored by his heretical enemies. While the book’s detractors succeeded in derailing its diffusion for centuries, the survival of the Shepherd today attests that many dissented from the church’s final judgment about Hermas’s text, which portends a version of early Christianity that was definitively overridden by devotion to Christ himself, rather than principally to his virtues.Robert D. Heaton teaches New Testament, Christian Origins, and Early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana. He also hosts podcasts for New Books in Religion. His research focuses on the New Testament canon and other early Christian literature, especially subcanonical books like The Shepherd of Hermas and the Apostolic Fathers. For more about Rob and his work, please see his website.Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Did Woodrow Wilson's daddy issues cause World War II? And what might this teach us about our contemporary political plight? Jordan Osserman talks with psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster and historian Patrick Weil about The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (Harvard UP, 2023). While conducting research at Yale, Patrick Weil chanced upon the unpublished and unredacted original manuscript of Sigmund Freud and Ambassador William Bullit's notorious psychobiography of former US President Woodrow Wilson - sat in an unlabelled dusty box. Weil's investigation of this incredible and poorly understood Freud-Bullit collaboration led him to radically reconsider Woodrow Wilson's role in the Treaty of Versailles, and the value of psychoanalysis in illuminating a self-sabotage of world historical proportions. Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City. She is the author of the forthcoming On Breathing (Peninsula, 2025), Disorganisation & Sex (Divided, 2022), The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2011) and Conversion Disorder (Columbia University Press, 2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Pantheon, 2013). She contributes regularly to Artforum, The New York Times and the New York Review of Books.Patrick Weil is a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and a senior research fellow at the French National Research Center in the University of Paris1, Pantheon-Sorbonne. Professor Weil's work focuses on comparative immigration, citizenship, and church-state law and policy. His most recent books are The Madman in the White House. Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (Harvard University Press, 2023) and De La Laïcité en France (Grasset, 2021). Weil is also, since 2006, the founder and the chairman of the NGO Libraries Without Borders (Bibliothèques Sans Frontières). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history