Judith Starkston, "Achilles's Wife: A Novel of Greek Myth Retelling" (Bronze Age Books, 2026)
In an ancient kingdom, a princess takes inspiration from a visiting young woman to challenge her father's views and reach for leadership-and then discovers her muse is a man. The goddess mother of G...
7 Jul 26min
Jay Szpilka, "BDSM Practices in Contemporary Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
In BDSM Practices in Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), cultural anthropologist and cultural studies scholar Jay Szpilka analyzes th...
7 Jul 1h 8min
Gullah-Geechee Diasporas: Knowledge, Culture, and Black Lowcountry Legacies
Gullah-Geechee Diasporas: Knowledge, Culture, and Black Lowcountry Legacies (University of South Carolina Press, 2026) counters romantic portrayals of Gullah-Geechee culture as a static, geographicall...
7 Jul 0s
George Grella, "Minimalist Music" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Minimalist Music (Bloomsbury, 2026) looks critically into the music's past, shows how the genre thrives across styles, and points the way toward minimalism's ongoing future. Minimalism as a genre ...
7 Jul 58min
Nicholas Freudenberg, "Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since The 1960s" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Today I'm speaking with Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Health at the CUNY School of Public Health. We are discussing his book, Fighting for New York: Activism for Hea...
7 Jul 56min
Daniel Rood, "In the Shadow of the Great House: A History of the Plantation in America" (Norton, 2026)
Dan Rood’s In the Shadow of the Great House (W.W. Norton & Co., 2026) is one of the first contemporary books to focus on the primary engine of slavery, race, and capitalism in this country: the pla...
7 Jul 1h 21min
Krzysztof Rowiński, "Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film" (Routledge, 2026)
Today’s guest, Krzysztof Rowiński, is the author of Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film (Routledge, 2026). This book focuses on the concept of non- redemptive ...
7 Jul 45min
Aswin Punathambekar, Adrienne Shaw and Jonathan Gray eds., "Planet Digital: A Global Media Cultures Reader" (NYU Press, 2026)
In the three decades since the rise of the global internet, digitalization has transformed how media are made, circulated, and consumed, reshaping culture on a planetary scale. Yet the story of glo...
7 Jul 1h 1min
