New Books in Literary Studies

In Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals: The Talmud After the Humanities (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), Mira Beth Wasserman undertakes a close reading of Avoda Zara, arguably the Talmud’s most scandalous tractate, to uncover the hidden architecture of this classic work of Jewish religious thought. She proposes a new way of reading the Talmud that brings it into conversation with the humanities, including animal studies, the new materialisms, and other areas of critical theory that have been reshaping the understanding of what it is to be a human being. Even as it comments on the the rabbinic laws that govern relations between Jews and non-Jews, Avoda Zara is also an attempt to reflect on what all people share in common, and on how humans fit into a larger universe of animals and things. As is typical of the Talmud in general, it proceeds by incorporating a vast and confusing array of apparently digressive materials, but Wasserman demonstrates that there is a whole greater than the sum of the parts, a sustained effort to explore human identity and difference. In centuries past, Avoda Zara has been a flashpoint in Jewish-Christian relations. It was partly due to its content that the Talmud was subject to burning and censorship by Christian authorities. Wasserman develops a twenty-first-century reading of the tractate that aims to reposition it as part of a broader quest to understand what connects human beings to each other and to the world around them. Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico (University of California Press, 2017) explores the definitive changes that the justice system as well as criminal ideas and practices underwent during the 1920s-1950s. For his most recent book, Pablo Piccato investigated spaces, actors, and fictions that shaped the complicated relationship between crime, justice, and truth during the consolidation of the post-revolution Mexican state. Through a series of compelling arguments, the author shows how impunity, the lack of transparency in judicial processes, and infamy are related to a constant quest for truth and justice that the state could not provide to Mexicans.  From the abolition of the jury system in the 20s, to the emergence of crime fiction, the author shows that men and women, the press, detectives, policemen, and even murderers themselves, shaped both ideas and practices in regards to violence, law-breaking, and the normalization of injustice in the country. Pamela Fuentes is Assistant Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, Pace University-NYC campus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In Germany, beginning in the 1960s, a major population shift took place. The reason for it was the German guest worker program. Due to the German ‘economic miracle,’ the country was in growing need of cheap labor, and it found it in places like Turkey. Although it was assumed that these ‘guests’ would later on move back to their home countries, they unexpectedly often stayed in Germany, founded families and became Germans. In her new book Women Between Strange Cities (Interkulturelle Stadtnomadinnen: Inszenierungen weiblicher Flanerie- und Migrationserfahrung in der deutsch-türkischen und türkischen Gegenwartsliteratur am Beispiel von Aysel Özakın, Emine Sevgi Özdamar und Aslı Erdoğan [Königshausen & Neumann, 2017]), Jannica Budde, a postdoc at Paderborn University, analyzes German-Turkish as well as Turkish contemporary literature thus shedding some light on the German-Tukish-cultural relationship. Reading works from Aysel Özakın, Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Aslı Erdoğan, she places particular emphasis on the female perspective. In Budde’s study, it becomes clear how German-Turkish and Turkish literature transcends stereotypical perceptions of Germany’s guest workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

What does it mean to say that a city can “die”? As Brian Tochterman shows in this compelling intellectual and cultural history, motifs of imminent death—of a “Necropolis” haunting the country’s great “Cosmopolis”—have been a persistent feature of discourse on the probable fate of New York City since the Second World War. The Dying City: Postwar New York and the Ideology of Fear (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) traces this “spatial narrative” across many domains of thought and cultural production: fiction and essays, planning theory and practice, humanistic and social-scientific criticism in the public square, and film in the age of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish. Throughout, Tochterman shows that New York intellectuals of diverse political inflections have made specters of urban “ungovernability” central to how America and the world look at New York—whether to compel remedies, to render the city’s very chaos alluring, or, especially, to argue for the futility of intervention. Tochterman sheds new light on such figures as E. B. White, Mickey Spillane, Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Lionel Abel, Michael Harrington, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nathan Glazer, and John Lindsay, among other compass points in the urbanism and intellectual life of postwar New York. Between “Fun City” and “Fear City,” a new image of the metropolitan past, present, and future comes into focus. Peter Ekman teaches in the departments of geography at Sonoma State University and the University of California, Berkeley. He received the Ph.D. from Berkeley in 2016, and is at work on two book projects on the cultural and historical geography of urban America across the long twentieth century. He can be reached at psrekman@berkeley.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s nineteenth-century novel Iola Leroy has not always been considered a core text in the canon of African American literature. Indeed, throughout much of the twentieth century, her work was dismissed as derivate and was erased by intellectuals until black feminist scholars such as Deborah McDowell and Hazel Carby undertook the crucial work of recuperating Harper’s writings and highlighting her important contributions to African American literature and history. Koritha Mitchell’s new critical edition of the book–Iola Leroy Or, Shadows Uplifted (Broadview Editions, 2018)—makes a timely contribution to the study of black literary and political history by contextualizing Harper’s life and work. In our contemporary moment where black women spearhead international movements for justice and equality such as Black Lives Matter and Me Too, but continue to be erased from public discourse and recognition, Mitchell’s foregrounding of Watkins Harper makes a crucial intervention in redressing the skewed narrative. Mitchell draws on the most recent scholarship and archival discoveries to provide a clearer picture of Watkins Harper and the importance of her novel then and now. Koritha Mitchell specializes in African American literature, racial violence throughout U.S. literature and contemporary culture, and black drama and performance. She examines how texts, both written and performed, have helped terrorized families and communities survive and thrive. Her study Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2011) won book awards from the American Theatre and Drama Society and from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. Her essay “James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings the Blues for Mister Charlie” appears in the March 2012 issue of American Quarterly and her Callaloo journal article “Love in Action” draws parallels between racial violence at the last turn of the century and anti-LGBT violence today. She recently completed a book manuscript, “From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture.” For the most comprehensive picture of her current projects and activities, please visit Mitchell’s website. Annette Joseph-Gabriel is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her forthcoming book, Decolonial Citizenship: Black Women’s Resistance in the Francophone World, examines Caribbean and African women’s literary and political contributions to anti-colonial movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Katelyn Knox’s book, Race on Display in Twentieth- and Twenty First–Century France (Liverpool University Press, 2016) examines francophone literature, art, dance, music, and fashion, considering how race and national identity intersect in postcolonial France. Emphasizing a widespread “institutionalized spectacularism” in France that exceeds the display of racialized bodies in more explicit, state-produced and orchestrated spectacle, Knox’s analysis emphasizes a more pervasive gaze permeating contemporary French culture. Moving from a discussion of the Colonial Exposition of 1931 to the analysis of more contemporary cultural forms, the book is a study of race that looks at a range of sources and varieties of performance. Thinking carefully through the persistent French engagement with and mobilization of ideas about race, Knox’s chapters explore official historical discourse, rhetoric and new media, cultural marketplaces, and the field of French and Francophone studies itself. The analysis throughout includes drawing attention to and interrogating a French universalist insistence on a “colorblind” society that has made looking for and looking at race a complicated challenge. Part history, part literary and cultural analysis, the book asks serious questions about the reproduction of racist gazes that can accompany even the most well-intentioned discussions of exclusion in France. It also considers whiteness as a constellation of nationalist ideals and assumptions that must be interrogated if the divisions and discriminations of contemporary France are to be understood and addressed. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. Her current research focuses on the representation of nuclear weapons and testing in France and its empire since 1945. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send an email to: panchasi@sfu.ca. *The music that opens and closes the podcast is an instrumental version of “Creatures,” a song written by Vancouver artist/musician Casey Wei (performing as “hazy”). To hear more, please visit https://agonyklub.com/   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

The Musical Novel: Imitation of Musical Structure, Performance, and Reception in Contemporary Fiction (Camden House, 2014; a new paperback edition has recently come out (Boydell and Brewer, 2018)) examines a variety of music and literature interconnections. Readers are invited to ask what these collaborations that arise at the crossing points of various fields offer for engaging in reading and writing. Relying on an extensive overview of theoretical works that substantiate the overlapping of disciplines, Emily Petermann’s research provides additional coordinates for the definition of intermediality that underpins her examination of novels that embrace music. As the title of the book suggests, Petermann considers multiple ways in which music is incorporated in literature: structure, performance, and reception. An extensive segment of this research is devoted to the discussion of musical structures that writers bring to their texts. In this regard, Petermann takes a step forward in the examination of music and literature collaborations. By emphasizing the significance of the musical structural component that informs a literary text, the book suggests a more profound dialogue between music and literature. The Musical Novel offers a detailed discussion of jazz elements that turn out to be effective for the organization of literary texts. Although this aspect has been previously discussed by scholars, Petermann focuses on the structural overlapping, drawing attention to improvisation elements. In this interview, Petermann specifies that despite the temptation to draw parallels between jazz and textual structuring, improvisation in literary texts, however, should be perceived as a metaphor. This comment invites the consideration of how musical and literary works affect both performance and reception. The Musical Novel contains a few chapters and subchapters that delve into a detailed analysis of Bach’s Goldberg Variations: Bach’s masterpiece appears rather productive for literary borrowings and variations at many levels, including structure and content. These chapters are particularly illuminating in terms of the dialogical opportunities that music and literature offer and welcome. Emily Petermann’s book offers an opportunity to explore new ways not only for reading and writing but also for teaching: one of the questions that this interview raises is how musical novel can be read and taught. The Musical Novel welcomes the expansion of the territory of interdisciplinary borrowings and collaborations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In his new book Autopoiesis and Literature: The Short History of an Endless Process (Autopoiesis und Literatur: Die kurze Geschichte eines endlosen Verfahrens [transcript, 2016]), Marcel Schmid, a visiting postdoc at the German Department of Brown University, analyzes the concept of “autopoiesis.” By reading Heinrich von Kleist as well as Franz Kafka’s The Trial, he focuses on particular dimensions of the concept: beginning, addressing, interrupting, repeating, translating and shifting of knowledge. Concerning Kafka’s Trial, he pays particular attention to its centerpiece “Before the Law.” In addition, Schmid moves beyond the literary studies perspective by approaching autopoieses from an interdisciplinary standpoint. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Published by the University of Hawaii Press in 2016, Nick Admussen’s exciting new book Recite and Refuse: Contemporary Chinese Prose Poetry explores the development of twentieth-century prose poetry within the unique political and cultural context of Communist China. In this ambitious study, Admussen attempts not only to define prose poetry but also to trace its ever-shifting role in modern Chinese society. In doing so, he produces a study which comprehensively analyses the dynamic manner in which Chinese prose poetry engages with a range of diverse cultural discourses, including science, popular culture and political rhetoric. Throughout the book, Admussen foregrounds the protean nature of the genre by exploring how prose poetry has been used by poets working both within and outside of official Communist Party strictures. Moreover, he identifies Chinese prose poetry as a unique tradition, distinct from Euro-American manifestations of the genre. In addition to these insightful analyses, Recite and Refuse also contains a number of original translations of important Chinese prose poems, including Ouyang Jianghe’s stunning “Hanging Coffin”. Miranda Corcoran received her PhD in 2016 from University College Cork, where she currently teaches American literature. Her research interests include Cold-War literature, genre fiction, literature and psychology, and popular culture. She has published articles on paranoia, literature, and Cold-War popular culture in The Boolean, Americana, and Transverse, and contributed a book chapter on transnational   paranoia to the recently published book Atlantic Crossings: Archaeology, Literature, and Spatial Culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In April 1923 Sigmund Freud detected a lesion in his mouth that turned out to be cancerous. From diagnosis to his death, he endured 33 surgeries and 10 prostheses. In 1932 alone, Freud consulted with his surgeon Hans Pichler 92 times. Freud’s smoking motivated much of the fussiness with his prosthetic jaw: it had to be right at the palate edge, with optimal occlusion so as to get the most out of his cigars. For Freud, smoking facilitated writing and intellectual creativity; it provided exquisite enjoyment. An inanimate object thus served as a conduit of both vitality and grave illness—a testament to the entanglement, indeed, the indistinguishability of the life and death drives. In 1977, after a biopsy of a tumor in her right breast, Audre Lorde fantasized about lopping off the agent of her destruction like “a she-wolf chewing off a paw caught in a trap.” (56) In the manner of a Kleinian infant, she directed her rage at the persecutory breast that betrayed her (once again) and ceased being her own. Lorde turned her poetry and personal survival into political acts of reparation, linking the ravages of cancer to racial and sexual injury and offering herself to queer communities of color as an object of introjection and identification. In 1992, on the anniversary of her breast cancer diagnosis, queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was en route to yet another academic lecture. She sat in a plane on a runway in frigid Toronto watching Pepto-Bismol-pink anti-icing fluid run down the window beside her. Seized by nauseating horror, she recalled the bloody lymphatic discharge draining from her body in the weeks following her mastectomy. In 1996, after imaging revealed a spinal metastasis that would ultimately kill her, Sedgwick emerged as a patient-teacher in her polyphonic A Dialogue on Love (1999), an account of a psychodynamic treatment intermixed with her poetry and her therapist’s notes. Through autobiographically inflected theoretical writings and the advice column, “Off My Chest,” Sedgwick engaged in what she called good pedagogy, instructing readers about love and mourning in the “prognosis time” of incremental bodily loss. Lana Lin brings together the stories of Freud, Lorde, and Sedgwick, as well as insights from her own struggle with breast cancer in the tour de force, Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer (Fordham University Press, 2017). With her three transferential figures, Lin explores what it means to loosen one’s grip on objects, to live with self-estrangement and threats to bodily integrity, and to understand loss as the maintenance of relationality. As cancer fragments and changes one’s relationship to time, it becomes a catalyst for reparation, invention, and love. Anna Fishzon, PhD, is Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol, UK. She is a candidate at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and author of Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-siecle Russia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She can be reached at afishzon@gmail.com.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies