Hopkins Press Podcasts

The latest issue of Literary Imagination includes Six Tanka by Shizuka Omori, and on today’s episode Literary Imagination editor Paul Franz brings together Shizuka Omori reading her poetry, along with translations by poet Yuki Tanaka. And after the poems, an interview between Franz, Omori and Tanaka about the tanka tradition and method, as well as an exploration of the process of translation. We’ve made Omori’s tanka pieces In Literary Imagination free to read on Project MUSE thru the end of the month.

Today’s episode features a conversation between Literary Imagination editor Paul Franz, and Ryan Hintzman, Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature at Indiana University Bloomington. He recently received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale.

Ryan HIntzman has an article in the new issue of Literary Imagination called “Distant Views of Waka Bay: Traditional Japanese Verse and the Question of Lyric” which centers on the real and imaginary Waka Bay in Japan. Hintzman says “Waka Bay (Waka no ura) is a pliable poetic place name (utamakura) whose name suggests the “Bay of Japanese Poetry” (waka). The real Waka Bay is a picturesque salt marsh located down the coastline from modern Osaka, but over centuries of poetic practice the physical landscape became entangled with an idealized site for the exercise of the literary imagination.”

We’ve made “Distant Views of Waka Bay: Traditional Japanese Verse and the Question of Lyric” available free to read via Project MUSE for the month of April.

The image in the podcast icon is a view of Mount Nagusa from Mount Tengu in Wakayama, Wakayama prefecture, Japan. Photo by 663 Highlands; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

4.13 Rivoletti, Lisi, and Livingstone on MLN's Auerbach Dossier by Johns Hopkins University Press

On today's episode of the Hopkins Press Podcast, Literary Imagination editor Paul Franz introduces the new issue of Literary Imagination, and interviews author/scholar John Pistelli about his new article, "Romantic Truth: Imaginative Authority in the Literary Criticism of René Girard."

Engagement with Girard's work has expanded outside of academic and literary circles in recent years, and his ideas have found purchase in economic and political institutions within the U.S. and around the world. In this discussion, Pistellii and Franz look at ways Girard has become an "oracle of the social-media epoch."

Along with two other pieces in the new issue of Literary Imagination — "The Mysteries of Love: On Alice Munro" by James Tussing and "Poems and Translations" by Victoria Moul — "Romantic Truth: Imaginative Authority in the Literary Criticism of René Girard" will be free to read on Project MUSE through the end of December.

From the new issue of Literary Imagination, one of the newest journals to join the Hopkins Press Journals roster, Victoria Moul reads originals and her translations of works by Julian the Apostate, Horace, a Latin didactic, and an ancient Pāli poem from the Therīgāthā — the oldest existing collection of poetry by women.

Victoria Moul is a British literary critic, scholar, poet and translator living in Paris.

She's held a series of academic posts at Queen’s College, Oxford; Cambridge; and King’s College London, and most recently was Professor of Early Modern Latin and English at University College London.

Victoria publishes a Substack about poetry and translation, Horace & Friends, and reviews regularly for other venues, including the Times Literary Supplement, PN Review, The Dark Horse and The Friday Poem.

We publish a lot of poetry in the Hopkins Press Journals, and as we move into 2026 we’ll be offering more readings on the podcast, and pepper in some shorter episodes among the long form interviews.

Today’s episode features an interview with Lydia Cooper and Matthew Reznicek, the guest editors of a brand new special issue of Studies in the Novel focusing on “Disease and Disability.”

As they say in their introduction, “This special issue offers critical insights into the way the novel as a form intertwines, disaggregates, confounds, and represents the embodied experience of disability and disease.” With articles that consider Nathanael Hawthorne, Ling Ma, Toni Morrison, Somerset Maugham, Wilkie Collins, and more, this discussion sets the stage for a can’t-miss issue of studies in the way novels can challenge and broaden "our understanding of how and why novelistic discourse is uniquely capable of representations of disease and disability”

On today's episode, we talk with Yumi Roth & Emmanuel David about their award-winning article in Journal of Asian American Studies, "Playing Filipino: Racial Display, Resistance, and the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West" Delving into archival photographs and records about the Filipino performers who joined Buffalo Bill's immensely popular touring show in the wake of the Philippine-American War, Roth and David uncover a fascinating and largely forgotten history.

In October, Roth and David accepted the Vicki L. Ruiz Award from the Western History Association for their research into the obscured history of the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill's Wild West touring show. This annual award recognizes the best article on race in the North American West published that year.

To accompany the podcast, "Playing Filipino: Racial Display, Resistance, and the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West" will be free to read on Project MUSE through the end of November.

On today’s episode we’re talking with the guest editors of a forthcoming issue of Leviathan, a journal of Melville Studies. These three editors, Jordan Alexander Stein, Dana Seitler, and Adam Fales have put together a riveting collection of essays exploring what they call Melville's Queer Afterlives — scholarship on the ways Herman Melville’s work has influenced queer studies today.

This is an epic conversation that includes mentions of Maurice Sendak and John Ashbery and, believe it or not, Gilbert Gottfried.

A content warning: this episode contains some senstive content and may not be suitable for all listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

Today we are talking with Emily Cousens, who is an assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations at Northeastern University, London, and their expertise focuses on trans feminist philosophy and history. They are also the UK lead for the Digital Transgender Archive. They are the author of Trans Feminist Epistemologies in the US Second Wave, which is the first book to explore the philosophical and intellectual contributions of trans individuals in the 1970s.

Emily’s got a new article in L'esprit Créateur called “Subjectivity Without Sex? The Materialist Trans Feminist Potential in Monique Wittig’s Non-Fiction”

This is part of a special issue of L'esprit Créateur devoted to Monique Wittig, and this whole issue is available free to all because L'esprit Créateur is part of our Subscribe to Open (S2O) Open Access initiative. Click through in the show notes to learn more about this great new initiative, and especially to read some exciting new scholarship about Monique Wittig.

On today’s episode, we talk with Patrick McKelvey about his new article for Theatre Journal about the early 20th century publicity campaign that popularized the Seeing Eye Dog.

Patrick McKelvey is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Notre Dame, and his research focuses the theatrical, cultural, and social history of disability in the twentieth-century United States. His first book, Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation (New York University Press, 2024) examines the relationship between US disability policy and the disability arts and culture movement, 1960-1990.

He’s also currently a National Humanities Center Fellow, as well as Book Review Editor for American Quarterly, another of the journals Hopkins Press publishes.

Patrick McKelvey’s Theatre Journal article "Honest Work Done by Honest Dogs":Canine Unemployment, Interspecies Rehabilitation, and Disability Performance.” will be available to read for free at Project MUSE for a few weeks after this podcast is released.