Early Puerto Rican Cinema and Nation Building: National Sentiments, Transnational Realities, 1897–1940
Naida García-Crespo
“In this groundbreaking study, the author roams knowledgeably across the fields of history, political science, and sociology…. Highly recommended.”
– CHOICE
Mikhail Bakhtin: The Duvakin Interviews, 1973
by Slav N. Gratchev and Margarita Marinova, eds.
“There are more than a few delights (and surprises) to be had from the Bakhtin presented in these interviews . . . I recommend it highly.”
– Frank Farmer, University of Kansas; The Russian Review (Vol. 79, No. 1)
Cultivating Peace: The Virgilian Georgic in English, 1650-1750
by Melissa Schoenberger
“Schoenberger’s capable and closely argued book presents an innovative reading of the Virgilian Georgic mode in English poetry of the long eighteenth century…This is a well written and cogently argued book that should be welcomed for its refreshingly new reading of the Virgilian georgic mode in English poetry of the long eighteenth century. Its strengths are many, not least, its juxtaposition of close reading with a keen sensitivity to social and political contexts.”
– The Review of English Studies, 2019
“Cultivating Peace is a compelling account of Restoration and eighteenth-century engagements with Virgil’s Georgics and with that poem’s cautious attitude toward the promise of an Augustan golden age.”
– Marvell Studies, 4.2
Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella
by Frieda Ekotto
Translated by Corine Tachtiris
“For the first time, two of Frieda Ekotto’s most remarkable works are being translated and bound into one volume . . . Ekotto masterfully illustrates the complex layers of African women-loving-women, which include patriarchy, violence, agency and colonialism.”
-Ms., December 2019
Fire on the Water: Sailors, Slaves, and Insurrection in Early American Literature
by Lenora Warren
“In making her argument the author marries familiar texts—such as Oloudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), Frederick Douglass’s novella “The Heroic Slave” (1852), and Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (begun in the 1880s; first published posthumously in 1924)—and some not so familiar (e.g., John Howison’s popular and much-reprinted story “The Florida Pirates,” published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1821) and their historical context, subjecting the narratives to subtle and extensive analysis….Recommended.”
– CHOICE, February 2020
“Fire on the Water offers a necessary reckoning with the persistent failure of the abolitionist imagination to conceive of slave insurrection as an expression of political agency and not simply as a reaction to the brutalities of the slave trade and of slave society. . . . Readers will find Fire on the Water an important contribution to the study of slavery and abolitionism. . . . Moreover, this book also makes major contributions to Black Atlantic studies and to maritime and oceanic studies at large. . . . Scholars working in these fields will find Warren’s book essential reading. They will also find the book’s clarity and concision impressive.”
– American Literary History
Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory: Language, Imitation, Art, and Verisimilitude in the Last Six Novels
by Earl E. Fitz
“Steeped in the works of Western literature and an imaginative reader of French Symbolist poetry, Machado creates, between 1880 and 1908, a “new narrative,” one that will presage the groundbreaking theories of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure by showing how even the language of narrative cannot escape being elusive and ambiguous in terms of meaning . . . A masterwork of original and seminal scholarship that rescues a critically important Latin American writer from an undeserved obscurity, “Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory: Language, Imitation, Art, and Verisimilitude in the Last Six Novels” is enhanced for academia with the inclusion of a prefacing article (A Note on Translations), sixteen pages of Notes, a six page Bibliography, and a seven page Index. While unreservedly recommended for college and university library Latin American Literary Studies collections in general, and Machado de Assis supplemental studies lists in particular, it should be noted for students, academia, and non- specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that “Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory” is also available in a paperback edition and in a digital book format.”
– Midwest Book Review
“Indeed, the rhythm of the novel alternates continually between self-analysis and depiction of exterior realities. It might remind us of a scenic drive, where we enjoy a rich variety of natural sights, but feel the need to stop from time to time to clean our specs. For this reason, Earl Fitz’s book should be appreciated as a complement to the many other excellent studies of Machado’s relation to a plentiful external landscape. Lest we become overly confident about our ability to know these realities, we should pause and, considering perspectives like those of this book, clean our glasses.”
– Journal of Lusophone Studies 4.2
Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein’s Afterlives
by Francesca Saggini and Anna Enrichetta Soccio
“Saggini and Soccio’s [book] defies expectations and has a great deal to say about the pedagogical uses to which Frankenstein’s textual afterlives might be put…. Many of the essays in this volume, although they don’t define themselves that way, might be characterized by what we now call presentist in that they trace how cultural forebodings about the dangers of difference that preoccupy the novel get re-mediated in contemporary culture to address those same concerns…. All of these essays are never less than illuminating, in their varied ways, on some understudied or overlooked aspect of the novel’s afterlives, as should be obvious from the book’s title but is never a given.”
-European Romantic Review, 31:1
Cy-Borges: Memories of the Posthuman in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges
by Stefan Herbrechter and Ivan Callus
“A unique and often fascinating volume, Cy-Borges positions Borges as a precursor to “posthumanism,” a postmodern approach to the humanities that decenters autonomy and free will, and examines human beings as limited organisms enmeshed in networks of interlocking forces such as history, culture, technology, and biology.”
-Shipwreck Library, January 2020
Poetic Salvage: Reading Mina Loy
by Tara Prescott
“Prescott’s Poetic Salvage wants to ease the agitation of Loy’s audience, to offer, wherever possible, ‘an in-depth exploration of Loy’s imaginary words and worlds’…Ultimately, it is precisely because of this established, celebrated lineage of close reading that Prescott can be certain that her work is a welcome addition to Loy studies, as it assuredly is.”
-Modern Language Review, Vol. 115, Part I, 2020
Effeminate Years: Literature, Politics, and Aesthetics in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain
by Declan Kavanagh
“What is striking throughout Effeminate Years is the sheer flexibility and
availability of the rhetoric of effeminacy. Kavanagh’s detailed, in-depth
literary analysis of what is, at times, a densely complex political discourse convincingly demonstrates the importance of antieffeminacy and homophobia to that discourse.”
– Journal of the History of Sexuality
Jane Austen and Masculinity
by Michael Kramp
“Jane Austen and Masculinity is a welcome addition to the significant
body of work on Austen and gender…The collected essays therefore exhibit a self-conscious awareness of disciplinary developments, and the analytical frameworks and tools therein reflect those of influential predecessors.”
-Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 32, no. 2.
The Global Wordsworth: Romanticism Out of Place
by Katherine Bergren
“Beautifully written, equally attentive to Romanticism and its afterlives, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in Romanticism and its legacies, whether scholarly or general readers. It offers a genuinely original perspective on Wordsworth and his works, without insisting on the privilege of canonicity.”
-Review 19
Don Quixote: The Re-accentuation of the World’s Greatest Literary Hero
by Slav N. Gratchev and Howard Mancing
“The range and variety of the entries in this collection will please and surprise seasoned Don Quixote scholars as well as anyone interested in the novel…The book is both a pleasure and a revelation.”
– Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume XCVI, No. 4
“The 17 essays in this volume, which also includes an introduction by Gratchev (Marshall Univ.) and Mancing (Purdue Univ.), take as their point of departure the concept of re-accentuation, initially proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin in The Dialogic Imagination (1975; Eng. tr., 1981). The interpretive and analytical openness of key works of prose fiction allow for re-reading and re-imagination in subsequent ages and through different media and approaches…The essays are intriguing in their range and methodologies, and they become testaments to the afterlife—what Bakhtin termed the “unfinalizability”—of Don Quixote in both public and artistic spheres.”
– E. H. Friedman, Vanderbilt University; CHOICE, 55.9 (May 2018)
Rewriting Franco’s Spain: Marcel Proust and the Dissident Novelists of Memory
by Samuel O’Donoghue
“In this engaging and illuminating study, O’Donoghue proves that despite the willed insularity of the Francoist cultural establishment Marcel Proust was well known in Spain, even before the Civil War, and had a deep, significant impact on many major writers who excelled exploring memory and self-writing…All in all, this is a superb book, clearly written, well organized and with a lively critical voice that makes it a pleasure to read.”
– Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume XCVI, No. 4
Rural Revisions of Golden Age Drama: Performance of History, Performance of Space
by Elena García-Martín
“Rural Revisions of Golden Age Drama is a well-written and innovative book that demonstrates an impressive breadth of research. Its interdisciplinary focus appeals to a diverse readership. The author merits much praise for the adept and engaging way in which she challenges the reader to reconsider Spain’s Golden-Age theatrical tradition and its role in society today.”
– Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume XCVI, No. 3
Avenues of Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing
by Regina Galasso & Evelyn Scaramella
“…this very unique collection allows the reader to appreciate the richness of
translating Iberian and Latin American writers’ urban centers. Indeed, this
collection sheds new light on translations that are only possible in cities while also uncovering how Latin American and Iberian influencers have transformed urban spaces by leaving their own cultural and historical marks. Scholars of Iberian, Latin American, and Translation studies will gladly add this outstanding collection of essays to their list of must-read books.”
-Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 43
Uniting Blacks in a Raceless Nation: Blackness, AfroCuban Culture and Mestizaje in the Prose and Poetry of Nicolás Guillén
by Miguel Arnedo-Gómez
“From the outset, it is clear that the book is very thoroughly researched, and
that Arnedo-Gómez’s argument is firmly established within a suitable theoretical context…Overall, this book offers a very original perspective on Guillén’s work…Arnedo-Gómez is clearly an expert on the topic and his desire to fill an apparent void in the scholarship on the poet is commendable.”
-Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 43
Playing the Martyr: Theater and Theology in Early Modern France
by Christopher Semk
“…beautifully thought-out, displays effortless erudition, and has much to offer any scholar or student interested in literature, religion, or the interplay of both. Playing the Martyr is an accomplished study, liberally peppered with well-chosen and pertinent anecdotes and observations, managing to maintain that elusive balance of erudition and readability…Christopher Semk’s book is a welcome contribution to this field and proves that researchers should not overlook, nor overgeneralize, this window into the early modern period.”
– H-France Review, June 2018
Menials: Domestic Service and the Cultural Transformation of British Society, 1650-1850
by Kristina Booker
“Kristina Booker’s Menials is an ambitious and solidly argued exploration of
the place of servants in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British
imagination. If it does not quite articulate the transformation of British society, as maintained by the subtitle, it certainly demonstrates one of the ways the British understood their culture differently over time…Booker is ultimately concerned with the ways that what she calls the “master class” maps its anxieties and concerns onto servants, both in fiction and in philosophical and political texts, as well as in the conduct literature that deals with the “servant problem.” In her view, the master class demonstrates its grip on the representation of servants, leaving little room for any signs of working-class identity or independence. Those signs, she believes, are quickly extinguished. This pessimistic view, which assumes a certain uniformity among the authors, derives in part from Booker’s use of economic perspectives; she reads literary servants in light of a trio of economic principles: self-interest, emulation, and consumption…Menials contributes substantially to the ongoing discussion of domestic servants in history and in literature. It has a strongly articulated and definitive point of view that will make it worth arguing with as well as building on.”
– Early Modern Women, Spring 2019, Vol.13, No. 2
“Booker has composed a tightly organized and argued account wherein each text is deployed in support of a neatly stated overall thesis. She has found an effective means of tracing critical cultural arguments over a long period of change, and has worked hard to isolate key themes and connect them with emblematic sources. There are no loose ends.”
– David Vincent, The Open University; Victorian Studies (61.4)
“As a new entry into this undertreated line of critical inquiry, Booker’s 2018 monograph represents a generative step forward. Well researched, accessible, and keenly incisive, Booker interweaves cultural critique and literary interpretation in an expressly cogent and provocative read…I find Menials a truly valuable and original contribution to the field. Kristina Booker is a fine writer and scholar, and her book should spark fresh conversations, both in print and in the classroom, to the profit of specialists and students alike.”
-The Eighteenth Century Intelligencer, October 2019
Jane Austen and Masculinity
by Michael Kramp
“This book provides thoughtful variety in its views of men and masculinity associated with Austen’s novels, all the richer for its broader considerations of contexts and aftereffects of Austen’s men.”
-The Eighteenth Century Intelligencer, October 2019
Reading Homer’s Odyssey
by Kostas Myrsiades
“The book is a great pleasure to read….Reading Homer’s Odyssey is a book that does exactly what it promises: it helps its reader to read (and understand) the Odyssey. It will appeal to a broad readership as well as to scholars and students of Classics and other fields, and it may also be suggested as accompanying reading in Classical Civilization classes or similar courses”
-Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2019
Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson’s Circle
by Anthony W. Lee
“Expertly compiled and deftly edited by Anthony W. Lee, “Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson’s Circle” is a collection of ten essays that explores relationships between Johnson and several of his main contemporaries…In their detailed and careful examination of particular works situated within complex social and personal contexts, the essays in this volume offer a “thick” and illuminating description of Johnson’s world that also engages with larger cultural and aesthetic issues, such as intertextuality, literary celebrity, narrative, the nature of criticism, race, slavery, and sensibility…An invaluable, erudite, thoughtful and thought provoking contribution to the study of Samuel Johnson’s life, philosophy, and literary work, “Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson’s Circle” is an extraordinary body of informative and deftly scripted scholarship.”
-Midwest Book Review
Menials: Domestic Service and the Cultural Transformation of British
Society, 1650–1850
by Kristina Booker
“Booker is ultimately concerned with the ways that what she calls the “master class” maps its anxieties and concerns onto servants, both in fiction and in philosophical and political texts, as well as in the conduct literature that deals with the “servant problem.” In her view, the master class demonstrates its grip on the representation of servants, leaving little room for any signs of working-class identity or independence. Those signs, she believes, are quickly extinguished. This pessimistic view, which assumes a certain uniformity among the authors, derives in part from Booker’s use of economic perspectives; she reads literary servants in light of a trio of economic principles: self-interest, emulation, and consumption…Menials contributes substantially to the ongoing discussion of domestic servants in history and in literature. It has a strongly articulated and definitive point of view that will make it worth arguing with as well as building on.”
-Early Modern Women, Spring 2019, Vol.13, No. 2
Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory: Language, Imitation, Art, and Verisimilitude in the Last Six Novels
by Earl E. Fitz
“A masterwork of original and seminal scholarship that rescues a critically important Latin American writer from an undeserved obscurity, “Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory: Language, Imitation, Art, and Verisimilitude in the Last Six Novels” is enhanced for academia with the inclusion of a prefacing article (A Note on Translations), sixteen pages of Notes, a six page Bibliography, and a seven page Index…unreservedly recommended for college and university library Latin American Literary Studies collections in general, and Machado de Assis supplemental studies lists in particular.”
-Midwest Book Review
Jane Austen and Comedy
Edited by Erin Goss
“This collection addresses a surprising lacuna in Austen studies: the relationship between her works and comedy…Their topics—respectively, Austen’s problematic ‘happy endings,’ her farcical treatment of the uncomfortable paternalism of General Tilney and Mr. Bennett, and her oddly illuminating presence in ‘monster mashup’ titles—will prove most useful in the classroom. Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; general readers.”
-CHOICE, September 2019 Vol. 57 No. 1
Beyond Human: Vital Materialisms in the Andean Avant-Gardes
by Tara Daly
“The author explains political ramifications using specific historical events illuminated by postmodern philosophical insights. All in all, the book offers an interesting explanation of the avant-garde’s powerful impact on the Andean region, pointing to productive affinities between the experience of indigenous traditions and the impulse to reject Western society. Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.”
-CHOICE, August 2019 Vol. 56 No. 12
Pretexts for Writing: German Romantic Prefaces, Literature, and Philosophy
by Seán M. Williams
“Including excellent endnotes and an extensive bibliography, this challenging study proves that prefaces are far from perfunctory and challenges readers to reevaluate this neglected form. Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students.”
-CHOICE, July 2019 Vol. 56 No. 11
Effeminate Years: Literature, Politics, and Aesthetics in Mid-Eighteenth Century Britain
by Declan Kavanagh
“Though a less erotic take on gender and sexuality, Declan Kavanagh’s Effeminate Years: Literature, Politics, and Aesthetics in Mid-Eighteenth Century Britain is a thoroughly modern analysis of the homosexual and homosocial legacy of the Seven Years War. Evoking Murray Pittock, Kavanagh stresses the difference between an effeminate landscape and a feminized one, staking a provocative claim for a characterization of the Celtic body politic which is both queer and male. Kavanagh’s argument is drawn along lines of public and private life: the politicization of homoerotic activity draws it into the public sphere, crystallizing anti-effeminate hostility, persecuting those found to be lacking in masculinity, and making the performance of gender a question of democracy.”
-The Year’s Work in English Studies
Reading Homer’s Odyssey
by Kostas Myrsiades
“Reading Homer’s Odyssey by Kostas Myrsiades offers a book-by-book commentary on the epic’s themes that informs the non-specialist general reader and engages the seasoned academic reader in new perspectives… An eloquently erudite and insightful analysis of one of the world’s most famous works of literature from Ancient Greece, Reading Homer’s Odyssey should be considered a core addition to both community and academic library Homeric Literature collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.”
-Midwest Book Review
“Myrsiades has written an extremely readable companion to Homer’s Odyssey… Careful discussions of the plot’s structure, the characters’ development, and Homer’s narrative resources illuminate the Odyssey’s poetic charm. An ample, up-to-date list for further reading is provided for each book of the poem, with a general bibliography at the end…Myrsiades’s book will be most useful for those encountering the Odyssey for the first time, though seasoned readers may also learn from it. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.”
-CHOICE, September 2019 Vol. 57 No. 1
The Global Wordsworth: Romanticism Out of Place
by Katherine Bergren
“A model of academic excellent, this literary study of William Wordsworth upon various cultures around the world is an extraordinarily informative and thought-provoking read.”
-Midwest Book Review
Playing the Martyr: Theater and Theology in Early Modern France
By Christopher Semk
“Playing the Martyr is an accomplished study, liberally peppered with well-chosen and pertinent anecdotes and observations, managing to maintain that elusive balance of erudition and readability…The topic of martyrs, or more broadly hagiographic literature, has interested scholars for a couple of decades, giving rise to fresh readings of individual plays, authors, or saints. Christopher Semk’s book is a welcome contribution to this field and proves that researchers should not overlook, nor overgeneralize, this window into the early modern period.”
-Paul Scott, University of Kansas; H-France Review (18.132), June 2018
The Ladies of Llangollen: Desire, Indeterminacy, and the Legacies of Criticism
By Fiona Brideoake
“Reading this book is a delight. Brideoake deftly deflects certainty, enjoyably poking holes in centuries of scholarship and speculation. She is self-aware, noting that the desire to set aside a determination is a reaction to those same centuries of fruitless recontextualizing, reflecting a rhetorical turn away from defining subsets of queerness by what goes on behind closed doors…This is a long overdue contribution to the scholarly record, challenging first and foremost Elizabeth Mavor’s landmark 1971 biography, which positioned the Ladies as “romantic friends” who remained chaste. Brideoake’s readings of both early-life documents (chapter 1) and mythologizing texts published near the time of the Ladies’ deaths (chapter 7) are unparalleled elsewhere…It would be a value purchase for anyone invested in queer, feminist, or class history.”
-Allana Mayer, graduate of the Masters of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) program (2014) from McGill University; Eighteenth-Century Fiction (30.4), 2018
Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen
By Jocelyn Harris
“Burney scholars will find Jocelyn Harris’s latest book Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen an enriching read…Considering the fact that Frances Burney and other members of the Burney family feature prominently in [Austen’s] allusions, [Harris’] book, by extension, sheds new light on the cultural influence of the Burneys on their contemporaries…the book gives shape to an Austen who was an avid and grateful consumer of the latest gossip, scandals and satirical prints about those from whom she was never far removed: famous writers, intellectuals and actresses, big naval figures, the royal family. With a keen eye for detail, Harris exposes the subtle connections between the unrestrained, public laughter surrounding such figures and the more restricted, oblique laughter in the novels, thereby deepening our understanding of Austen’s skill for satire in the process.”
-Elles Smallegoor; Burney Letter, The Burney Society, Spring 2018 (24.1)
“Harris’s impressive new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen (2017), builds on the work of her pioneering 1989 study, deepening our sense of what Austen may have been up to in crafting her novels… For readers willing to engage with the possible, and to consider links that do not, at first glance, seem probable, Harris’s well-written, deeply researched, and timely book has a great deal to offer… Harris’s arguments are highly illuminating. For years to come, readers and critics will be weighing the massive number of new insights in this book, troubling through their implications for our future readings of Austen, politics, history, and popular culture.”
-Devoney Looser, Arizona State University; The Review of English Studies
Memory, War and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women
By Sarah Leggott
“In recent years, memory has come to the fore of Spanish cultural studies, inspiring a plethora of articles, conferences and books. Sarah Leggott’s oeuvre focuses on the gendered dimensions of the concepts that have dominated Spanish memory studies, such as post-memory and Republican memory, while also reconceiving the traditionally feminist subjects of the mother-daughter relationship and the absent mother as important vectors of memory transmission…This book is a welcome and original addition to the burgeoning field of memory studies, and would be suitable for college-level undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It would be of particular interest to scholars working in the fields of Hispanic gender and memory studies.”
-Lorraine Ryan, University of Birmingham; Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume XCV, No. 1 (2018)
Confluence Narratives: Ethnicity, History, and Nation-Making in the Americas
By Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta
“Anonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta has taken the field of inter-American studies in his own direction. Pioneered by Earl Fitz, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Nina Scott, Elizabeth Lowe, and Sophia McClennen (to name only a few), this approach unites the Americas through the comparative method…Tosta’s prose is clear, engaging, and jargon-free. Any class or study on inter-American literature could use this book, but also any study of authors and populations that were treated in isolation before (Japanese and African Americans) would benefit from this well-researched, fascinating, and interdisciplinary work of multicultural scholarship.”
– John Maddox, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Comparative Literature Studies, Volume 54, No. 4 (2017)
Fixing Babel: An Historical Anthology of Applied English Lexicography
Ed. by Rebecca Shapiro
“Fixing Babel: An Historical Anthology of Applied English Lexicography, edited by Rebecca Shapiro, offers an invaluable collection of the explanatory front matter written by dictionary authors from the early seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries. This unique collation, beautifully edited with instructive commentary, enables readers to grasp the shifting dynamic of descriptive and prescriptive elements used by lexicographers in documenting the ever-widening scope of English language use in the documented time frame.”
– Lowell Gallagher, University of California, Los Angeles; SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Volume 58, No. 1 (Winter 2018)