New Books in Intellectual History

By New Books Network

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 publ... more

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The podcast currently has 3,428 episodes available.

New Books in Intellectual History episodes:

August 11, 2026 William Whyte, "The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood" (Harvard UP, 2026)
We often idealize the university as a sanctuary for disinterested
reason, where material concerns are set aside in favor of higher
principles. Yet when we remember our own college experiences, what
springs to mind are not just lofty concepts but also material realities:
cramped dorm rooms and musty library stacks, gothic towers and freshly
mowed quads.
The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood (Harvard
University Press, 2026) puts such seemingly inconsequential details at
the center of the institution’s 900-year history. Constructing each
chapter around an emblematic material—straw, stone, flesh, blood, silk,
paper, iron, and concrete—Professor William Whyte traces the intimate
connections between the university’s shifting physical form and its
evolving social and cultural meanings. From the medieval University of
Paris, where students purchased bundles of straw to use as chairs in
otherwise-unfurnished classrooms, to the ocean of concrete at
postcolonial Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Whyte shows
how competing visions of higher learning left their imprint on
generations of university architecture, landscaping, and furniture.
Along the way, he highlights perennial fears that, within the social
space of the university, the life of the mind would recede before
worldly interests: that student bloodlines would be tainted by racial
intermixing, that courting donors with buildings named in their honor
would become more important than research and education, that the allure
of powdered wigs and silk gowns would undermine scholarly discipline.
A richly textured chronicle, The University concludes that,
even in the age of remote learning, the college campus is irreplaceable.
The future of higher education includes fiber-optic cables, but stone,
brick, and steel are here to stay.
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.

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43min
August 09, 2026 Marisa Karyl Franz, "Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums (Cornell University Press, 2026) reveals nineteenth-century Siberian museums, built on Indigenous land and increasingly populated by political exiles, as active sites of ethnographic knowledge-making and centers of scientific research, regional identity, and colonial authority. Rather than collecting from distant colonies, these institutions concentrated on surrounding communities, their tools, beliefs, and everyday lives, to configure ideas about what counted as legitimate knowledge.
Dr. Marisa Karyl Franz traces how Siberian museums helped construct shamanism as an ethnographic category. Shamans, while familiar and embedded in local space, were recast as icons of cultural otherness or representatives of an imagined primitive past. Through the evolving languages of science, anthropology, and empire, the local was abstracted and exported, feeding global museum networks and shaping modern anthropology. Yet, the museums held onto the intimacy of place, preserving tensions between familiarity and spectacle, documentation and desire.
By placing Siberia at the center of a broader intellectual and political history, Near and Desired Things challenges assumptions about where modern knowledge is made and redefines provincial spaces as sites of innovation and as forces that reshape the terms of empire.
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.

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57min
August 08, 2026 Leopoldina Fortunati, "The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital" (Verso, 2025)
The definitive feminist analysis of reproductive and ‘caring’ labor to emerge from Italian feminism of the 1970s.
Emerging from the great social upheavals that contested the sexual and racial divisions of labor globally in the 1970s, Leopoldina Fortunati’s classic work expands and transforms how we analyze the sphere of reproduction, redefining the value of the individual’s life and the labor performed in the home.
Released here for the first time in its unabridged form with historical notation and contemporary commentary, The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital (Verso, 2025) is a foundational text and essential contribution to today’s discussions of social reproduction and the history of Italian feminism. Fortunati’s work provides some of the earliest theorizations of ‘immaterial,’ ‘affective,’ and ‘caring’ labor, and of the role of technology in reproduction, articulated decades before their popular reception in English academic literature. Reading this work some 50 years after its original publication gives us the tools to analyze the contemporary state of capitalist development and of women’s lives today. The text remains prefigurative and essential in our era of digital labor.
Leopoldina Fortunati was a core member of Lotta Femminsta and the Wages for Housework Movement internationally. Along with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James and Silvia Federici, she composed many of the group’s core theoretical and political texts. Her early work continues to inform movements concerned with struggles over reproduction globally and in subsequent work as a theorist of media and technology, Fortunati has been at the vanguard of contemporary theory addressing the relation between gendered labor and technology.
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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1h 16min
August 07, 2026 Andres Saenz de Sicilia, "Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society" (Brill, 2024)
Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society is the latest book from Dr Andres Saenz De Sicilia, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London. Andres’ excellent title, published with Brill and released in soft cover with Haymarket Books late last year, is an in-depth exploration of the concept of subsumption as it appears in the works of three great thinkers, and the relevance of the paradigm for modern critical theory.
In this book, Andres traces the concept of subsumption through Kant, Hegel, and Marx, in both its philosophical dimensions and its relevance to critical social theory. Andres examines the utilisation of subsumption as a conceptual framework whereby a particular is brought under a universal, up to the complex and dynamic operations of subsumption in modern-day capitalism, as a system that subsumes human life under the logic of value. As Andres illustrates through the intricate and careful argument in the book, following the use of subsumption in the work of these key theorists not only offers a new perspective to understand these thinkers, but helps articulate a historically-focused and robust framework to investigate the mechanisms of capitalist power. Of particular interest perhaps from a political economy perspective is Andres’ investigation of Marx’s journey through subsumption within the pages of Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx, and also how the theoretical framework of subsumption helps us understand production and social reproduction under capitalism.
Elliot Dolan-Evans is a sessional lecturer and tutor in law at Monash University and RMIT. His research investigates the political economy of global capitalism, forms of international governance, and questions of war and peace. His first book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and the Conflict in Ukraine, is now out with Bristol University Press.

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44min
August 07, 2026 Giulio Boccaletti, "The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Republicanism is arguably the most powerful political idea in
history, an extraordinary feat of human imagination that balances
individual liberty with collective responsibility. The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World (Princeton
University Press, 2026) reclaims this idea as the path to sustaining
our life together on a changing planet, reframing our relationship to
the environment not as a constraint on liberty but as its republican
foundation.
Giulio Boccaletti argues that we must renew our commitment to freedom
and civic responsibility through popular sovereignty. He presents the
environmental republic as a necessary alternative to blind faith in
technocratic management, the shallow moralizing and apocalyptic rhetoric
of some activists, and the disingenuous skepticism of vested interests.
Our environmental challenges are not simply about “agreeing on the
facts” or living within technical limitations—they reflect a deeper
failure of political institutions. Drawing on the history of ideas and
real-world examples, Boccaletti presents a political framework that
places our relationship to our surroundings at the heart of how we
exercise our voice, coordinate collective action, and define development
itself.
Offering hope in an anxious age of rising authoritarianism and widespread pessimism, The Environmental Republic
challenges the false choice between environmental protection and human
freedom, showing how place-based institutions can deliver both
sustainability and human development through true self-governance.
Giulio Boccaletti
is an author whose writings on natural resources security have been
translated into several languages. He has held international leadership
positions in the private and not-for-profit sectors. He is the
scientific director of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change,
one of Europe’s largest research institutions focused on Earth science
and transition economics, and cofounder of Chloris Geospatial, a
space-tech company specializing in Earth observations. His books include
Water: A Biography, and his work has been featured in acclaimed PBS series such as H2O: The Molecule That Made Us, Human Footprint, and The Future of Nature.
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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1h 27min
August 01, 2026 Vaneesa Cook, "Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks" (Beacon Press, 2026)
In Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks (Beacon Press, 2026), historian Dr. Vaneesa Cook examines the history of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty in order to consider, more broadly, the United States' relationship with liberty and empire. Empire and liberty have been part of the American story since the founding, but they are often at odds, sometimes irreconcilably so. Cook examines their changing relationship and meaning using these two iconic buildings as anchors. She also examines the symbolism and importance of the landmarks themselves. She considers how individuals and groups who have had more
limited access to liberty have tried to shape the meaning of the symbols and their own rights at the same time. In telling this sweeping history, Cook touches in themes of American identity and ideals.

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47min
July 31, 2026 Mikhail Pelevin, "Love, Honour and God: Pashto Writings of Early Modern Times" (Brill, 2025)
In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Mikhail Pelevin about his book Love, Honour and God: Pashto Writings of Early Modern Times (Iran and the Caucasus Monographs, vol. 5, Brill, 2025).
Love, Honour and God is a survey of three centuries of Pashto
literary and educational writing, from roughly 1530 to 1830,
the period Pelevin identifies as classical in the history of Pashto
letters. Moving from the earliest, now-lost administrative "Daftar" of
Shaykh Mali through the sectarian mystical poetry of Bayazid Ansari's
Roshani movement, the Sunni traditionalist manuals of Akhund Darweza,
and the towering figures of Khushhal Khan Khatak and ʿAbd al-Rahman
Momand (Rahman Baba). This
book reconstructs a written tradition that has been persistently
marginal to both regional and Western scholarship. Pelevin frames this
history through what he calls the dissolution of the Persophonie and the
slow emergence of Pashto as a written language in the shadow of, and
eventually alongside with
the dominant Persian literary cosmopolis. Rather than reading this as a
proto-nationalist story imposed retroactively, he traces a much older
and more specific discourse of Pashtun self-identity — descent,
language, custom, and religion, articulated by the authors themselves,
long before any colonial or nationalist framework existed to name it.
What
makes the book distinctive is its insistence on working from the Pashto
texts as primary sources in their own right, rather than as
illustrations for arguments made in Persian chronicles, in colonial-era
administrative writing, or in the historiography of "Pashtun tribal
society" that has tended to treat literary production as peripheral to
political and military history. Pelevin is explicit about this reversal:
he wants to shift attention from the political to the poetical.
Qaseem
Ahmadzai holds a master's degree in intellectual history from Södertörn
University, Sweden. His research focuses on postcolonial theory,
historiography, and non-Western intellectual traditions, with particular
attention to Afghanistan and the broader Pashto-Persephone worlds.

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34min
July 30, 2026 Steven K. Green, "American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Today I'm speaking with Steven K. Green, Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of History and Religious Studies at Willamette University. We are discussing his book, American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism (Oxford University Press, 2026). Since the first permanent Protestant settlement in Jamestown in 1607, Protestant Christianity has waxed and waned through a series of revivals, migrations, and challenges from alternative faiths like Catholicism and Mormonism. The Gilded Age, from roughly 1870 to 1900, was a unique period for Protestantism in American history. Most Americans still subscribed to a Protestant faith, though threats began to arise not from other confessions, but rather from philosophical and scientific challengers. The so-called freethinkers represented a broad range of beliefs and ideas, being united by a mutual skepticism of religious conservatism and traditional sexual and gender mores. American Infidelity tells the story of this tug-of-war for the soul of a nation, with Christianity on one side and the legacy of thinkers like Thomas Paine on the other.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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0min
July 29, 2026 Two Revolutionary Jews: Leon Trotsky and Chaim Zhitlowsky
When Jews plunged into the world of politics en masse at the beginning of the 20th century, a variety of new options were available to them. Two of the leading figures who proffered novel, but opposing political avenues to the Jewish masses were Dr. Chaim Zhitlowsky and Leon Trotsky. Zhitlowsky, a founder of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary party, offered a synthesis of socialism and Yiddish nationalism. Trotsky, a leading Russian Social Democrat, formulated a strict version of internationalism that left no room for Jewish national aspirations. Many Jews, however, did not view their political choices in such stark terms. Instead, they saw both men as leaders and thinkers who pointed the way to Jewish national liberation and working-class revolution, a Jewish homeland, as well as a flourishing life in the diaspora. In this lecture, Tony Michels will explore the political ideas of Trotsky and Zhitlowsky, and how Jews engaged with them during the first half of the 20th century.
This program is the first in a series of programs held in conjunction with YIVO’s current digitization of the Jewish Labor and Political Archives (JLPA). Consisting of nearly 200 collections encompassing 3.5 million pages of archival documents that were collected by the Bund Archives, the JLPA forms the world’s most comprehensive body of material pertaining to Jewish political activity in Europe and the United States.
This lecture originally took place on April 28, 2025.

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1h 25min
July 29, 2026 Lisa Blaydes and Samuel Helfont eds., "Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities" (Stanford UP, 2026)
The opening of Iraq's Ba'th
Party archives revolutionized the study of Iraqi politics and history,
offering scholars unprecedented access to the inner workings of one of
the world's most impenetrable autocracies. Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities (Stanford University Press, 2026) edited by Dr. Lisa Blaydes
and Dr. Samuel Helfont brings together leading scholars to take stock
of what we have learned from over a decade of research using the Ba'thist
archives, contributing to a new understanding of Iraq's history, with
wider implications for understanding authoritarianism in general.
The
contributors show how research in these unique archives challenges
previous assumptions about Ba'thist Iraq and the workings of
authoritarian regimes. Their chapters provide
fresh insights into how Saddam Hussein's regime functioned both at the
elite level and through everyday bureaucratic practices, shedding light
on state power, social relations, and international politics of the
Middle East. The volume also critically reflects on the ethical
questions posed by the archives, including their origins, the impact of
their removal from Iraq, and access barriers for local scholars. Rich in
empirical detail yet framed by cutting-edge theoretical questions, this
book demonstrates
how the Iraqi archives have reshaped debates about authoritarianism,
governance, repression, and state-society relations well beyond the
Iraqi case.
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.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
...more
42min

FAQs about New Books in Intellectual History:

How many episodes does New Books in Intellectual History have?

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