New Books in British Studies

By Marshall PoeSociety & Culture History

New Books in British Studies episodes

August 29 Courtney Weikle‑Mills, "Sugarcoated Ethics: Children’s Literature and Atlantic Enslavement" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)
What if children’s literature was never as innocent as we imagine?
In Sugarcoated Ethics: Children’s Literature and Atlantic Enslavement (Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2026), the relationship between childhood
reading and Atlantic slavery is brought into sharp focus. The book
argues that children’s literature did not merely emerge alongside the
plantation economy; it was deeply shaped by it. Sugar, sweetness, moral
instruction, and domestic comfort were all tied to systems of
enslavement and colonial trade, even as the violence behind them was
softened or erased in stories for young readers.
The book also
examines how ideas of white civility shaped childhood. White children,
particularly girls, were cast as symbols of innocence, refinement, and
moral feeling, while Black children were excluded from those same
protections. Through analyses of persecuted-heroine narratives,
missionary education, and colonial schooling, the study reveals how
children’s literature helped normalise racial hierarchy across the
British Empire.
Yet the project is equally attentive to
resistance and alternative ethical traditions. Afro-Caribbean oral
storytelling, including Anansi tales, songs, and folktales, emerges as a
powerful counterarchive. These traditions preserved histories of
survival, collective memory, and resistance that colonial print culture
often attempted to suppress. The discussion of the “Queen Mary” Fireburn
song, for instance, highlights how storytelling became a form of
ethical education and cultural continuity across generations.
One
of the book’s most striking contributions is its global scope.
Children’s texts on slavery circulated far beyond Britain and the
Caribbean, travelling to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East via
missionary and imperial networks. In translation and adaptation, these
works sometimes reinforced imperial ideologies, but they could also be
reshaped in unexpected ways by ‘local’ readers and writers.
Sugarcoated Ethics
asks readers to reconsider what children’s literature teaches us about
morality, empathy, and history. It challenges the assumption that
childhood stories are politically neutral and invites us to think more
critically about the ethical worlds children’s books continue to create
today.
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1 hr 1 min
August 29 Stefan Collini, "Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Stefan Collini
The
study and teaching of English literature is generally regarded as one
of the central disciplines in the modern university, yet for much of its
history it struggled to gain academic legitimacy and was frequently
derided as 'a soft option'. Its early professors responded by
emphasizing its scholarly character, foregrounding philology and
literary history in ways that marked the syllabus far into the twentieth
century.
Stefan Collini provides here the first full account of the
discipline's development from its late-eighteenth-century beginnings up
to the early 1960s. Paying special attention to institutional settings,
he challenges numerous assumptions about the character of universities
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the detailed
exploration of syllabuses, exam papers, and other institutional records,
the impact of literary criticism is revealed to be later and more
partial than is commonly assumed. Rather than seeing the early teaching
of English literature as 'a substitute for religion' or 'a means to
soften class conflict', Collini emphasizes the role of ideals of
learnedness and scholarship, as well as of external factors such as
opportunities for employment in the civil service and secondary
school-teaching. There are full discussions of the parts played by such
figures as John Churton Collins, A.C. Bradley, George Saintsbury, and
Walter Raleigh, together with sceptical analyses of the decisive
significance usually attributed to Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, I.A.
Richards, and F.R. Leavis. Separate chapters are devoted to neglected
aspects of the story such as the role of Classics, the importance of the
subject for women's higher education, and the connections with English
teaching in schools.
Drawing on extensive use of institutional
archives and records as well as the writings of contemporary
participants, the book offers a vivid and wide-ranging history of
English-as-discipline and its centrality across academic, literary,
cultural, and educational life over the past two year hundred years, as
well as a resounding testament to its continued importance and relevance
today.
Stefan Collini, Professor Emeritus of Intellectual
History and English Literature, University of Cambridge. Stefan Collini
was educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Research Fellowship at
St John's College, Cambridge, he was Lecturer, then Reader, in
Intellectual History at the University of Sussex 1974-86; Lecturer, then
Reader, then Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature
at the University of Cambridge 1986-2014. He is a Fellow of the British
Academy, and a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and Guardian.
Morteza 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.
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1 hr 20 min
August 28 Holly Crawford Pickett, "The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
After mounting London’s outdoor pulpit known as St. Paul’s Cross on
8th December, 1588, Anthony Tyrrell found himself perched before a
skeptical audience. He stood in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral to
declare his recantation of Catholicism and return to England’s official
Protestant Church. The trouble was he had been there before – in January
of the same year, in fact – to do the same thing. On that occasion,
however, he had shocked on-lookers by delivering an anti-Protestant
tirade instead of his promised recantation. How could Tyrrell, a serial
convert, who eventually changed church affiliation as many as ten times,
overcome the doubts of his suspicious audience? Tyrrell and similar
converts who made multiple conversions understandably aroused suspicions
of hypocrisy that made the performative character of public recantation
troublingly evident. Yet as Holly Pickett argues in The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), these performative elements are actually indispensable to any conversion, whether an individual’s first or fifteenth.
Serial
converts served as uncomfortable reminders to their contemporaries that
religious identity is always unverifiable. The first study to explore
serial conversion as a discrete phenomenon in this era, The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England challenges
confessional divisions within much early modern historiography by
analyzing the surprising convergence of Protestant and Catholic in the
figure of the serial convert. It also reveals a neglected strain of
religious discourse in early modern England that valued mutability and
flexibility even in the midst of hardening and increasingly narrow
understandings of conversion.
Michael Shaw is a PhD student in Historical Theology at Union
College, Belfast, and a Visiting Tutor at the Irish Baptist College. His
research focuses on the thought of the Independent Puritan theologian
Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646). His primary research interests lie in
historical theology, particularly early modern Baptist and
Congregationalist theology and ecclesiology. He also serves as the
Associate Pastor at Strandtown Baptist Church, Belfast.
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39 min
August 28 An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals with Matthew Engelke
A fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at non-religious funerals in contemporary London, An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals (Princeton UP, 2026) is an intimate and moving ethnographic account of funerals for people who don’t believe in God or an afterlife. Focusing on secular funeral celebrants of the British Humanist Association (now called Humanists UK), the book examines how their ritual work is geared toward helping realize a secular world. There is a strong ethical commitment behind this effort, which is to face death with honesty based on the belief that this life is all we have. For the humanist celebrants and those they serve, this is what allows for a life with meaning and purpose. Written in a vivid style, the book centers on the lives and the funerals of particular people, from a three-year-old child to a man in his nineties. Anthropologist Matthew Engelke, who trained as a humanist celebrant as part of his research, describes how these officiants try to craft “sincere” funerals, avoiding language and music that might suggest that the person who died had any religious beliefs. The book also captures the highs and lows for humanist celebrants of working in the funeral business—a business that is, for many of them, a kind of vocational calling. Above all, An Honest Death draws out the tensions in secular humanist thought and practice between reason and the body, rationalism and materialism. Nothing matters more to the humanists than “daring to know” in the Enlightenment tradition, but nothing is so certainly known as the fact that we are finite and embodied creatures.
Matthew Engelke is professor and chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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55 min
August 26 Paul Johnson, "Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next" (Princeton UP, 2026)
There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that
progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including
the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by
declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond
not only to traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges
posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next (Princeton
University Press, 2026), written by Paul Johnson and coauthors, drawing
on the findings of the six-year IFS Deaton Review, connects these
conditions to inequality—inequality not just of income and wealth but of
health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a
detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an
in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed
and what can, or should, be done about them.
The book explains
the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and
examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It
argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008–2009
has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes
stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and
dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and
educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic
stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing
concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in
social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in
dangerous differences between regions and in political power across
groups.
The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers
a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot—and how we
can change course to achieve better outcomes for all.
Paul Johnson
is provost of the Queen’s College, University of Oxford, and former
director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). He is the author of
the Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money.
Morteza 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.
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53 min
August 26 Speech and the City
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Yaron Matras about his new book Speech and the City.
In this timely book, Yaron shows that cities can provide an important counter-weight to political polarization by forging civic identities that embrace diversity. The book traces the emergence of a city language narrative that embraces and celebrates multilingualism and helps forge a civic identity. He critiques linguaphobic discourses at a national level that regard multilingualism as deficient citizenship. Drawing on his research in Manchester, he examines the 'multilingual utopia', looking at multilingual spaces across sectors in the city that support access, heritage, skills and celebration. The book explores the tensions between decolonial approaches that inspire activism for social justice and equality, and the neoliberal enterprise that appropriates diversity for reputational and profitability purposes, prompting critical reflection on calls for civic university engagement.
Beyond telling the story of the Multilingual Manchester project, the book also offers an intriguing glimpse into the author’s distinguished career as a linguist, scholar, and activist.
Reference
Matras, Y. (2024). Speech and the City: Multilingualism, Decoloniality and the Civic University. Cambridge University Press.
For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.
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51 min
August 26 Malcolm Murfett, "Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38" (Tithebarn Press, 2026)
As Foreign Secretary in Neville Chamberlain's Cabinet in 1937, Eden
didn't believe in appeasing the German and Italian dictatorships or the
militaristic Japanese regime. Instead, he wanted to confront their
aggression head on. Faced with growing Japanese assertiveness, including
the launching of an undeclared war on China in July 1937, Eden appealed
to the US for help. He believed sending an Anglo-American naval force
to the Western Pacific would demonstrate that the democracies were not
spineless, but were prepared to stand up for what they believed in. Was
this a viable alternative to Chamberlain's appeasement policy, now
notorious for its failure in the face of fascism?
In Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38 (Tithebarn Press, 2026), historian
Malcolm Murfett tells the story, using a wide range of primary sources
from the UK and US archives, of Eden's push to persuade Roosevelt's
administration to be more assertive in the Pacific. He reveals the
diplomatic dance both sides engaged in, each unsure of the other's
reliability, of their own ability to commit, and tied up in their own
internal struggles for policy dominance. We get a real insight into how
two once-and-future allies managed each other's expectations, as well as
the wider strategic parameters within which they were operating.
With
eerie echoes of our own times, Murfett explores the challenges involved
in both international diplomacy, and foreign and security policy. How
standing up for principles and values can become compromised by the
requirements of Realpolitik, and logistical constraints.
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35 min
August 22 Ian Bradley, "Liquid Faith: Scotland's Sacred and Supernatural Waters" (Birlinn, 2026)
Since time immemorial, water has been a major theme in myth, religion
and folklore throughout the world. With its 12,000-mile coastline, as
well as a plethora of rivers and lochs, Scotland is a particularly
rewarding place in which to explore the spiritual dimensions of what is
both the most commonplace and yet the most mysterious of all chemical
compounds.
Liquid Faith: Scotland's Sacred and Supernatural Waters
(Birlinn, 2026) by Ian Bradley is a journey from healing wells,
springs, river sources and bogs to the seashore, islands and whirlpools,
to discover the legends, superstitions and rituals that have grown up
around them. Drawing on spirituality, philosophy and faith as well as
history and tradition, Professor Bradley highlights the crucial
importance of water over thousands of years, and emphasises its
preciousness and vulnerability today and in the future.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

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37 min
August 19 Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India" (U California Press, 2026)
Ganja
is the popular name in Hindustani, Bengali, and other South Asian
languages for intoxicating substances produced from the plant species
Cannabis sativa L. Starting in the eighteenth century, British India's
colonial administrators sought ways to systematically tax and govern how
ganja circulated from the farms of peasant families in rural Bengal to pipes, plates, and cups elsewhere in the subcontinent.
Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India
(University of California Press, 2026) is an open-access book that
follows the perpetual incongruity between regulatory efforts to pursue
the plant through botanical observation, colonial reportage, and excise
statistics and the leisurely, devotional, and creative ganja pursuits
among people. Dr. Utathya Chattopadhyaya offers a social history of
ganja in a multispecies framework that reveals how the cannabis plant
co-constituted histories of empire, gender, subalternity, and labor
under British rule. Against the weight of the criminalization and
"drug-ness" of cannabis, Dr. Chattopadhyaya puts the multidirectional
and polysemic history of ganja as plant matter at the center of
analysis.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

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56 min
August 19 Amy Blakeway, "War and Governance in Scotland, 1543-1559: Destruction, Reconstruction and Reform" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
Drawing from local archives alongside national and international records, War and Governance in Scotland, 1543-1559: Destruction, Reconstruction and Reform (Edinburgh UP, 2026) by Dr. Amy Blakeway argues that warfare was the defining feature of government and politics in Scotland for the two decades following the death of James V. It demonstrates that beyond the direct effects of invasion, the need to raise unprecedented taxation, as well as warfare’s secondary consequences, such as plague and price inflation, disrupted communities throughout Scotland, engendering enhanced social control. These effects endured for many years after the peace of 1550: new laws were passed to manage those who had collaborated with the invaders and taxation remained high.
The post-war decade was one of reconstruction, and it was this which drove religious reformation in 1559-60. The book shows that appreciating the scale of the crown’s ambition places the Scottish state’s development closer to that of its European counterparts.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

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1 hr 5 min

About New Books in British Studies

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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.