New Books in Art
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network, an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode, scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. The network offers over 150 channels and 28,000 episodes, covering a wide range of academic topics. Listeners can explore the full catalog on the New Books Network website and subscribe to a free weekly newsletter for updates.
Episodes
"The humanities should really matter to STEM disciplines" with Yasmín Hernández and Baruch Vergara
This is the first episode in a series that explores the intersections of science and the humanities in university life. In today’s conversation, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera is joined by artists Yasmín Hernández and Baruch Vergara for a discussion about Herlihy-Mera's article “The humanities should really matter to STEM disciplines.” They explore the relationship that art and the humanities have wit
Painting Paranoia: Cold War Art and Anti-Communism with Julia Bailey (U Illinois Press, 2026)
The Soviet Union’s rise as a totalitarian state and economic rival to the United States sparked a cultural cold war. The conflict was colored by paranoia and a mindset that pitted the USSR’s state-sponsored Socialist Realism against its so-called opposite: Western art in general and Abstract Expressionism in particular. But can one version of art be the opposite of another?Julia Tatiana Bailey tea
The Connoisseur: A Cultural History with Peter Burke (Reaktion, 2026)
Eminent historian Peter Burke joins Jana Byars to discuss his new book, The Connoisseur: A Cultural History (Reaktion, 2026), considering the art connoisseur from the Renaissance to the present day. Connoisseurs have been an influential, if somewhat mysterious, figure in the history of art, responsible for making or breaking high-profile collections and reputations and influencing taste, the art m
Glenn Peers, "Strange and Familiar History of Byzantine Art: Interpretation, Risk, and Empathy" (ARC Humanities Press, 2026)
Strange and Familiar History of Byzantine Ar: Interpretation, Risk, and Empathy (ARC Humanities Press, 2026) represents a risky experiment in art-history writing. It takes objects of Byzantine art—manuscript illustration, frescos, mosaic, sculpture—and reads them through the lenses of disability studies, media studies, and gender studies in order to reveal something about their significance not on
Joe Jackson, "Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic: Music, Modernity, Transmedia Art" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Kahlil Joseph has collaborated with musicians FKA twigs, Flying Lotus, Sampha and Shabazz Palaces among many others. He has directed numerous films, music videos and advertisements across Africa, America and Europe. The award-winning filmmaker's disruptive style – which frequently merges visual representations of transcontinental experiences with the countercultural energies of Afrodiasporic music
Marjolijn Bol, "The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Panel painters in both the middle ages and the fifteenth century created works that evoke the luster of precious stones, the sheen of polished gold and silver, and the colorful radiance of stained glass. Yet their approaches to rendering these materials were markedly different. In The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500 (U Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Marjolijn Bol explores s
Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus" (Seagull Books, 2026)
In a world obsessed with expertise and control, the figure of the idiot illuminates deeper truths about society. In this interview, Morteza Hajizadeh interviews Leonhard Emmerling about his book The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus (Seagull Books, 2026)
Dostoevsky and Nietzsche wrote about him; Dadaists and punks idolized him; artists like Warhol and Beuys made him their icon. From hol
Duty, Banality, and Hopefulness with Alex Cain
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Alex Cain.
Dr Alex Cain researches in the fields of political theory and ethical theory, with a particular focus on the work of Hannah Arendt, among other figures in the history of philosophy. Her work in this field has so far mostly focussed on the topics of friendship, political action, judgement and the role of experience in philosophical inquiry.
They discuss
Transcending Disciplinary Confinements With(in) Beckett Studies
This is Dr. Swati Joshi's inaugural episode on the New Books Network. In this episode, she interviews Dr. Lucy Jeffery about her monograph, Transdisciplinary Beckett: Visual Arts, Music, and the Creative Process (ibidem Press, 2021). She is also co-editor and author of Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production, published by CEU Press and AUP in 2026. She is co-found
Ellery E. Foutch, "A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Cultural studies of the nineteenth century often categorize their subjects as being motivated by one of two opposing notions: a wholehearted embrace of progress or an antimodernist nostalgia. A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026) centers a different kind of response to the period’s newly intensified awareness of temporality and histor
Sara Pappas, "Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century (University of Toronto Press, 2024) examines one of the most revered art historical narratives of Western
art: the famous turning point for painting and sculpture usually
emblematized by the works of Édouard Manet and then the Impressionists.
Instead of the usual revaluation of this turning point, Sara Pappas
argues
Paulina Banas, "Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)
Following Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 campaign in Egypt, new possibilities of travel and improvements in printing technology saw an emergence of publishing ventures in France and Britain dedicated to the production of albums and travel accounts featuring images of Muslim Egypt and Islamic architecture and catering to a growing European fascination with the East. In her debut book, Visualizing Egypt:
Meredith Gamer, "City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London" (Yale UP, 2026)
City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London (Yale UP, 2026) uncovers the complex and often unexpected connections between eighteenth-century London’s sites of punishment and its spaces of art-making, instruction, and display. Drawing together a wide range of images, objects, and texts – from popular woodcuts and anatomical sculptures to moral tracts and dictionaries of slan
Victoria Donovan, "Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East" (Daunt Books, 2025)
Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (Daunt Books Publishing, 2025) is
a unique reflection on the much-mythologised Donetsk and Luhansk
regions of the Ukrainian east, the old and recent history of the region
as seen by an esteemed academic multi-disciplinary scholar Victoria
Donovan in her numerous travels to the region prior to the full-scale
invasion. Seen through a de
David Denby, "Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer" (Henry Holt, 2025)
What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform
American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with
acclaimed cultural critic David Denby to discuss his book Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer (Henry Holt, 2025), a vibrant portrait of four extraordinary Americans whose Jewish identities helped shape the modern United States.
Though
they worked i
Lucy D. Curzon, "Art and Citizenship in Conflict: British Women War Artists, 1939–45" (Manchester UP, 2025)
Art and Citizenship in Conflict: British Women War Artists, 1939-45 (Manchester UP, 2026) by Dr. Lucy Curzon examines the work of women war artists in order to highlight the complexity of citizenship and gender in Britain during the Second World War.
Evelyn Dunbar, Mary Kessell, Ethel Gabain, Stella Schmolle, and Laura Knight, among others, were commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee
Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
In Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001 (Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing scholarship, she traces the emergence of the New Art Practice of the late 1960s and 1970s, highlighting
Matthew Campbell, "The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy" (Penguin, 2026)
On June 10, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned two pieces of artwork to Cambodia: an Angkor statue and a sandstone lintel. It’s the latest repatriation effort by the U.S.’s premier art museum, and the third time the Met has had to give up Cambodian artifacts specifically.
Matthew Campbell’s The Man Who Stole The Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy (P
Wednesdae Reim Ifrach, "Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma" (North Atlantic Books, 2026)
A creative, body-based guide to healing for queer, trans, and
gender-expansive readers—somatic tools and expressive arts to feel safer
in your body, rewrite your story, and sustain connection. Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma (North Atlantic Books, 2026) is
a practical, consent-centered guide to healing body trauma through
embodiment and c
Cécile Bishop, "Forms of Blackness: Race and Visibility in the French-Speaking World" (Duke UP, 2026)
What does Blackness look like? In Forms of Blackness: Race and Visibility in the French-Speaking World (Duke University Press, 2026),
Cécile Bishop argues that this seemingly simple question has no
straightforward answer. Instead of treating race as something
immediately visible, she explores how Blackness emerges through the
interplay of perception, language, and history.
A central theme of t
Rachel Silveri, "The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
With The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism (University of Chicago Press, 2026),
Rachel Silveri takes a fresh look at the desire to unify art and life,
an ambition long regarded as foundational to the European historical
avant-gardes. She reveals how many early twentieth-century artists saw
their own everyday lives—their bodies, ide
John Kapusta, "Self-Realization Nation: How Artists of the Creative Counterculture Made a New America" (U California Press, 2026)
John Kapusta's Self-Realization Nation: How Artists of the Creative Counterculture Made a New America (U California Press, 2026) is the story of an unexpected group of performing artists who led one of the most influential artistic movements in contemporary American history. After World War II, personal fulfillment emerged as a defining American cultural ideal. Self-realization--the quest to becom
Cleo Nisse, "Venetian Canvas and the Transformation of Painting" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Between
the fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries, European painting
underwent a profound transformation as artists increasingly painted on
canvas instead of wood or walls. Nowhere was more important to this
shift than Venice, where painters experimented with canvas with
remarkable creativity and innovation. In Venetian Canvas and the Transformation of Painting (Princeton
University Pres
Rebecca Kosick, "Dispatches from the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press" (Wayne State UP, 2026)
Can publishing change the world? In Dispatches from the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press Rebecca Kosick (Wayne State UP, 2026), an Associate Professor in Comparative Poetry and Poetics at the University of Bristol, tells the story of The Alternative Press. Beginning in Detroit in the late 1960s, initially based in the house of Ann and Ken Mikolowski, the press created a rich and eclectic set o
Olivier Krischer and Shuxia Chen, "Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s-1980s" (Australian Centre on China in the World, 2025)
Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s–1980s (Australian Centre on China in the World, 2025) explores four transformative decades of photography in Taiwan, tracing its evolution amid the island’s emergence from Japanese colonialism and integration into Nationalist China, largely under martial law (1949–87). Through a dozen richly illustrated essays and interviews, the book bridges the gap betwe
Audio and Ideas: Exploring the Possibilities for Scholarly Podcasting, Panel #2
This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On May 13, 2026, Princeton’s Center for Human Values hosted a day-long conference titled Audio & Ideas: Exploring the Possibilities for Scholarly Podcasting. It was co-sponsored by Princeton’s Journalism program, and the NYU Podcast Initiative. Over the course of four panels, scholars, podcasters, and journa
Blair LM Kelley, "Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days" (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026)
Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026) is
the first fully illustrated history of Juneteenth and other
Emancipation Day celebrations, told through photographs, art, and an
engrossing narrative.
For more than 150 years, Black communities
have gathered to honor freedom, resilience, and the ongoing struggle for
true liberation. While
Karl Whittington, "Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)
Karl Whittington joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania State University Press,
2025). What role does desire play in the making of art objects? Art
historians typically answer this question by referring to historical
evidence about an artist's sexual identity or to particular kinds of
imagery. But what about anonymous a
Elly Kent, "Artists and the People: Ideologies of Art in Indonesia" (NUS Press, 2022)
Exploring the work of established and emerging artists in Indonesia’s vibrant art world, Artists and the People: Ideologies of Art in Indonesia (NUS Press, 2022) examines why so many artists in the world’s largest archipelagic nation choose to work directly with people and in the studio. While the social dimension of Indonesian art makes it distinctive in the globalised world of contemporary art,
Lewis Ryder, "Connoisseurs and conmen: The contest for cultural authority in early twentieth-century Britain" (Manchester UP, 2026)
Connoisseurs and conmen: The contest for cultural authority in early twentieth-century Britain
(Manchester University Press, 2026) by Dr. Lewis Ryder examines John
Hilditch (1872-1930), a notorious collector of Chinese art who lied,
hoaxed and manipulated in his struggle against museum experts to become a
cultural authority. Previously overlooked as a pest with a dubious
collection, this book
Jonatan Leer and Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, "Food Porn: Food Aesthetics in a Digital Age" (Bristol UP, 2026)
Is food porn a vibrant and democratic new expression of modern food culture or a superficial addition to an image-saturated world? Tracing its origins from the 1970s to today, this timely book examines the evolution of food porn as a desire-inducing aesthetic practice and a visually extravagant food spectacle.
Through discussions on class, gender, sexuality and national identities, Food Porn: Foo
Janani Balasubramanian and Natalie Gosnell, "Art-Science Undisciplined: A Playbook for Transformative Collaboration" (U California Press, 2026)
Art-Science Undisciplined invites us into a collaborative journey grounded in mutual exploration and transformation. Moving beyond transactional exchanges of expertise, artist Janani Balasubramanian and astrophysicist Natalie Gosnell draw on their own experiences, as well as stories from other art-science collaborators, to offer an imaginative guide for developing a values-based and joyful undisci
Kanika Singh, "The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture, published
by Cambridge University Press in July 2025, is a pioneering study on
Sikh museums, a unique phenomenon of contemporary India—for their sheer numbers, distinctive display, malleability and presence in multiple
cultural spheres and their political significance. This case study of
Bhai Mati Das Museum at Gurdwara Sisganj,
Timothy K. August, "The Refugee Aesthetic: Reimagining Southeast Asian America" (Temple UP, 2020)
In The Refugee Aesthetic: Reimagining Southeast Asian America (Temple University Press, 2021), Timothy K. August centers Southeast Asian American writers and artists to develop a theory of refugee aesthetics as a way of considering how aesthetic forms are created and contested by refugees, nonrefugees, and institutions alike.On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, Timothy K. August
Alicia Volk, "In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Alicia Volk’s In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2025) uncovers the largely overlooked history of Japanese art during the years of occupation (1945-1952). Volk’s diverse case studies trace the intersections of politics and art in this charged period. As it had accommodated, shaped, and resisted empire, Japanese art now accommodated, shaped, and resisted th
Fiona Rogers, "Cut Out: A Feminist History of Photo Collage, Montage and Assemblage" (Thames & Hudson, 2026)
Female artists have long employed collage to reflect the ways in
which identity is often constructed from conflicting, contrasting and
contradictory parts. Cut Out: A Feminist History of Photo Collage, Montage and Assemblage (Thames & Hudson and V&A Publishing, 2026) by Fiona Rogers explores the relationship between photography and feminist collage, foregrounding the use of femmage—a rad
Sumana Roy, "Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal (Oxford UP, 2024) by Sumana Roy takes an unexpected cast of writers and artists and, in studying their work as ‘plant thinkers’, looks at how their stories and songs, art and films, and, of course, the idiomatic affected Bengali life and thought. Forest and garden, grass and root, weeds and magical plants—supported by a foliage of thought that allowed the
Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)
Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmful stereotypes used to portray Black characters. Shows began touting “All Colored Revues” to indicate that a cast was made up of actual Black performers rather than white people in blackface, and that these spectacles aimed to build stories around th
Holly EJ Black, "The Story of Printmaking: A Global History of Art" (Yale UPs, 2026)
The significance of printmaking within the history of art is often underplayed, obscured or misunderstood. The Story of Printmaking: A Global History of Art (Yale UP, 2026) by Holly EJ Black tells the story of artist prints from across the globe in a manner that is accessible and engaging. It demystifies how prints are made – from woodblock to etching – and explores how, throughout history, printm
Counter-Revolutionary Puzzles with Guillermo Badia
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Guillermo Badia.
Dr Guillermo Badia is a philosopher working in logic. His research interests are logic in computer science, semiring-based logics and models of computation, and modal, intuitionistic and other non-classical logics.
They discuss logic, murder mysteries, and the counter revolutionary search for truth.
A transcript of this episode will be available
Nazi-Looted Art and Archives: Recovering and Preserving Jewish Culture
The ravages of the Holocaust and post-World War II led to the theft and disappearance of art, archives, and personal assets. Join Jonathan Brent and Howard Spiegler for a discussion on the quest to recover and preserve these cultural treasures.
This discussion originally took place on March 23, 2021.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art Hosted
Ana I. Oancea, "Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France (U Toronto Press, 2025) presents a master narrative of the inventor in fin-de-siècle French literature by analyzing the works of Jules Verne, Albert Robida, Émile Zola, and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Their writings challenge the role of science in shaping French national identity and aim to transform contemporary understandings of scien
Angela Dimitrakaki, "Feminism. Art. Capitalism" (Pluto Press, 2026)
Can art change the contemporary world? In Feminism, Art, Capitalism Angela Dimitrakaki, a Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the university of Edinburgh, offers a Marxist Feminist perspective on a variety of issues in both society and the cultural sector. Engaging with a huge range of examples, as well as theorising key issues such as work and labour, the long modern, communing p
The World According to Sound: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett on Audio Art, Wonder, and Humanistic Reasoning
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and special guest host, Melanie Kiechle (Associate Professor of History, Virginia Tech), chat with radio producers Chris Hoff and and Sam Harnett about their sound production project, The World According to Sound. Hoff and Harnett came to Virginia Tech to put on their octophonic sound show, Ways of Knowing. We recorded this special livestream edition of Peopl
Cooking Sections, "Waves Lost at Sea" (Spector Books, 2026)
Waves Lost at Sea (Spector Books, 2026) traces the evolving practice of Cooking Sections, whose work spans visual arts, architecture, and ecology. Since 2013, they have been investigating anthropogenic infrastructures, industrial food systems, and human-made climates: from artificially colored farmed salmon and drained buffalo wetlands to ocean-filtering oysters and Sicilian tomatoes outlawed unde
Nabil Ali, "Gold from Newton's Apple Tree: Historical Recipes for Natural Inks, Paints, and Dyes" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Flowering currant, ivy, Portuguese laurel, and woad might all have grown in a medieval garden, but it would have taken special expertise to extract and create rich blue and purple pigments from them. Humans have been extracting dyes and inks from natural materials for millennia, and the practice was firmly established during the medieval era, recorded in manuscripts that survive today. Gold from N
Decolonizing the Novum
In this episode of High Theory, Zac Zimmer talks to Kim about Decolonizing the Novum. The novum is a concept developed by Darko Suvin that names the new element of a science fiction or speculative fiction narrative. SF narratives from the Americas that rewrite archival material about colonization and first contact have begun an imaginative project of decolonizing that novum.
In Zac’s words, the "n
Margaret Heffernan, "Embracing Uncertainty: How Writers, Musicians and Artists Thrive In An Unpredictable World" (Policy Press, 2025)
Most people hate and fear uncertainty. It causes such stress and anxiety that we often choose certain surrender over doubt, becoming passive, dependent, addicted―and more anxious than ever. Doubling down on the certainties promised by technology and micro-management only makes things worse, leaving no opportunity for innovation, adaptation or invention. Artists live with uncertainty constantly―but
Karen L. Bowen and Dirk Imhof, "The Burgeoning European Print Trade: The Distribution of Prints Via the Plantin-Moretus Press of Antwerp" (Harvey Miller, 2025)
Karen L. Bowen and Dirk Imhof join Jana Byars to talk about their new book, The Burgeoning European Print Trade: The Distribution of Prints Via the Plantin-Moretus Press of Antwerp (Harvey Miller, 2025). The European print trade is an evocative topic. Not only art historians, but social, cultural, and economic historians all agree that it was of vital importance in the Early Modern Period, as the
Bimbola Akinbola, "Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure, and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Art" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Art (Duke University Press, 2025), Bimbola Akinbola redirects the focus in diaspora studies from questions of loss and longing to acts of unapologetic self-definition through the study of Nigerian diasporic women artists navigating disparate geographies, allegiances, and identities. Drawing on the work of co
Eivind Røssaak, "The Cory Arcangel Hack: Digital Culture and Aesthetic Practice" (MIT Press, 2025)
The first in-depth exploration of the work of artist Cory Arcangel, a pioneer of DIY-new media art whose influential “hacks” subvert the confines of Big Tech.
Cory Arcangel (b. 1978)—perhaps best known for Super Mario Clouds, the most referenced artistic game hack in art history—became one of the first artists from a new generation of punk DIY–new media geeks to capture the attention of the art wo
Beth Derderian, "Art Capital: Museum Politics and the Making of the Louvre Abu Dhabi" (Stanford UP, 2026)
Museums often served nationalist and imperialist interests in the past, but the primary force in the 21st century is the market. Museum franchising—exemplified by the Louvre Abu Dhabi—is one of the most visible cases of the increasing entanglement of art and museums with capital interests. Such projects are often touted as global enterprises diversifying the art world. Frequently, critics of these
The Club: Where American Artists Found Refuge in Belle Epoque Paris
In Belle Époque Paris, the Eiffel Tower was newly built, France was experiencing remarkable political stability, and American women were painting the town and gathering at a female-only Residence known as The American Girls' Club in Paris. Opened in 1893, The Club was the center of expatriate living and of dedication to a calling in the fine arts, and singularly harbored a generation of independen
Vojta Hybl, "Rocks: A Guide to the Stones Around Us and the Stories They Tell" (Frances Lincoln, 2026)
What is that rock you’ve just picked up? Which minerals is it made of, what’s unique about it and what can it reveal about Earth’s deeper story?Rocks: A Guide to the Stones Around Us and the Stories They Tell (Frances Lincoln, 2026) gives you the tools to answer these questions. Geologist and science illustrator Vojta Hybl guides you through more than 100 rock types, explaining how they form, what
The 50th Anniversary Tour of Patti Smith's Horses: A Conversation with Caryn Rose
Caryn Rose's Three Chords and Blessed Noise (2026) is an ode to the lost art of the tour diary. In November of 2025, Patti Smith and her band embarked on a short tour in the United States and Europe to commemorate this auspicious occasion and to allow us, the children of this particular revolution, to celebrate this achievement, these songs and these people.
Rose headed off for a week of shows: Ch
Jonathan Blackwood and Jasmina Tumbas, "Contemporary Art in the Post-Yugoslav Space" (Routledge, 2025)
Contemporary Art in the Post-Yugoslav Space explores the production, discussion, and consumption of contemporary art across the post-Yugoslav region. Bringing together 16 original contributions, the work explores how and why contemporary art discourses have continued to navigate the chronic difficulties facing local cultural economies since the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia's common federal
Claire Goldstein, "Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
In the Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France (Northwestern University Press 2025) explores the relationship between sensory experience, state ideology, and artistic form, examining literature and art inspired by comets that unsettled the heliocentric order to which French politics and culture aspired.
Guest Claire Goldstein Professor of French and Dir
Marc Chagall: Reflections of a Granddaughter
Marc Chagall is widely recognized as the preeminent Jewish artist of the 20th century, but little is known of his work to preserve Jewish culture. In this program, his granddaughter Bella Meyer interweaves images of Chagall’s artwork and personal letters to reflect on his life, passion for Yiddish and dedication to perpetuating Jewish heritage and culture.
This program originally took place on Fe
Georgios Boudalis, "On the Edge: Endbands in the Bookbinding Traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean" (Legacy Press, 2022)
On the Edge: Endbands in the Bookbinding Traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean by Dr Giorgios Boudalis (Legacy Press, 2022). The term endbands designates the two bands worked with thread(s) at the head and tail edges of the spine of a book. The techniques with which they are worked and the ways with which they are connected to a bound codex vary greatly over time and geography. The purpose of th
Reginald Jackson, “Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls” (U Michigan Press, 2018)
Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deeply in shaping how we understand the past, live in the present, and imagine possible futures. Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls (University of Michigan Press, 2018) explores the relationship between reading, dyin
Margaret S. Graves, "Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery, and the Art of Islamic Ceramics" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In the heyday of Islamic art collecting around the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of premodern ceramic objects circulated on the international antiquities market. Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery, and the Art of Islamic Ceramics (Princeton University Press, 2026) tells the story of how traditional craft skills of the Islamic world, often thought to have died out with the advent of i
Lynda Nead, "British Blonde: Women, Desire and the Image in Post-War Britain" (Yale UP, 2025)
In the 1950s, American glamour swept into a war-torn Britain as part of a broader transatlantic exchange of culture and commodities. But in this process, the American ideal of the blonde became uniquely British—Marilyn Monroe transformed into Diana Dors.
British Blonde: Women, Desire and the Image in Post-War Britain (Yale UP, 2025) by Professor Lynda Nead examines postwar Britain through the chan
Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) is an empirically grounded ethnographic study of how graffiti and street art can be used as a political tool to circumvent censorship, express grievances, and control public discourse, particularly in authoritarian states.
For more than a decade, Dr. Alexis M. Lerner combed the alleyways, underpasses, and
Lucy Donkin, "Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Dr. Lucy Donkin’s Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2022) illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in which people in Medieval Western Europe and beyond experienced sacred spaces.The ground beneath our feet plays a crucial, yet often overlooked, role in our relationship with the environments we inhabit and the spaces with which we interact. “The ground
Polina Dimova, "At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism" (Penn State UP, 2024)
Inspired by Richard Wagner’s idea of the total artwork, European modernist artists began to pursue multimedia projects that mixed colors, sounds, and shapes. Dr. Polina Dimova’s At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism (Penn State UP, 2024) traces this new sensory experience of synaesthesia—the physiological or figurative blending of senses—a
Wisdom of the Goddess: The Divine Feminine in South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Himalayan Art
Hillary Langberg discusses Wisdom of the Goddess, an online exhibition she curated for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art featuring nine goddesses across Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Langberg traces her path from fieldwork at western Deccan cave temples to public humanities, and addresses the curatorial choices, pedagogical design, and theological framing involved in presenting devī
Donna Stein, "The Empress and I: How an Ancient Empire Collected, Rejected and Rediscovered Modern Art" (Skira, 2020)
In the 1970s, American curator Donna Stein served as an art advisor to Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi, the Shahbanu of Iran. Together, Stein and Pahlavi generated an art market in Iran, as Stein encouraged Pahlavi’s patronage of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Today, the contemporary section of the Iranian National Collection―most of which continues to languish in storage―is considered one of t
Daisy Fancourt, "Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives" (Cornerstone Press, 2026)
Is culture good for you? In Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives (Cornerstone Press, 2026) Daisy Fancourt, a Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology and head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at University College London offers a comprehensive and compelling argument for the ways arts and culture offer health and social benefits for individuals and societies. The book o
Alvin K. Wong, "Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone" (Duke UP, 2025)
How do we compare across languages, media, and histories, all without flattening differences? And what might Hong Kong teach us about doing comparison differently?
Alvin K. Wong examines these and other questions in Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone (Duke UP, 2025), a wide-ranging and thought-provoking study of queerness in Hong Kong. Bringing together Sinophone literature
"Plenty for All: The Art of Rick Fröberg" (Akashic Books, Ltd., 2016)
Rick Fröberg was an accomplished artist and musician born in Southern California who spent most of his early creative years in San Diego before moving to New York, and then back to San Diego toward the end of his life. While juggling both of his creative outlets, he established a meaningful, urgent, vital, and powerful platform. Plenty for All: The Art of Rick Fröberg (Akashic Books, 2026) represe
Graeme Brooker, "The Story of the Interior: How We Have Shaped Rooms and How They Shape Us" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
From traditional nomadic dwellings to state-of-the-art airports, through monumental temples and Baroque palaces to high-rise apartments and high-fashion boutiques, The Story of the Interior: How We Have Shaped Rooms and How They Shape Us (Thames & Hudson, 2025) by Professor Graeme Brooker explores an exciting array of inside spaces from around the world to reveal how the fundamental elements o
Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)
Mike Jay's Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind (Yale UP, 2023) is a provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mind.Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences spar
Matthew Davis, "A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
Mount Rushmore is something of an American Rorschach test. Some look at the monument and see American patriotic ideals carved into a mountainside. Others see only the rank hypocrisy of American presidents blasted into an Indigenous sacred site. In A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore, writer and journalist Matthew Davis explores the complexities, moral grey areas, an
Tony Spawforth, "What the Greeks Did for Us" (Yale UP, 2023)
Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like “pandemic,” a Freudian state of mind like the “Oedipus complex,” or a replica of the Parthenon in a Chinese theme park, ancient Greek culture shapes the contours of our lives. Ever since the first Roman imitators, we have been continually falling under the Greeks’ spell.But how did ancient Greece spread its influence so far and wi
David Newheiser et al., "Art-Making as Spiritual Practice: Rituals of Embodied Understanding" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Art-Making as Spiritual Practice: Rituals of Embodied Understanding (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2025), edited by Professor David Newheiser, is a new collection asks if it’s possible to consider art-making as a spiritual practice independent of explicit religious belief or content. Where earlier research has focused on the religious significance of secular artworks, this innovative volume turns its
Colin Williamson, "Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
What do technical renderings of plant cells in trees have to do with Disney’s animated opus Fantasia? Quite a bit, as it turns out: such emergent scientific models and ideas about nature were an important inspiration for Disney’s groundbreaking animated realism. In Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Colin Williamson presents a vivid
Maddalena Alvi, "The European Art Market and the First World War: Art, Capital, and the Decline of the Collecting Class, 1910–1925" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The outbreak of the First World War shattered the established European art market. Amidst fighting, looting, confiscations, expropriation fears and political and economic upheaval, an integrated marketplace shaped by upper-class patrons broke down entirely. In its place, Maddalena Alvi argues, can be found the origins of a recognizably modern market of nationalized spheres driven by capitalist inv
Mariana Ortega, "Carnalities: The Art of Living in Latinidad" (Duke UP, 2024)
How can habits of racialization be affected by art, in its reception and its creation? How can a carnal aesthetics help us understand Latinx life? What if we listen to photographs? How might they undo us? Can we be undone? In Carnalities: The Art of Living in Latinidad (Duke UP, 2025), Mariana Ortega focuses on photography using a hermeneutics of love and critical phenomenology to think about and
Ulinka Rublack, "Dürer's Coats: Renaissance Men and Material Cultures of Social Recognition" (CEU Press, 2025)
Jana Byars meets one of her academic heroes when Ulinka Rublack joins her to talk about Dürer's Coats: Renaissance Men and Material Cultures of Social Recognition (Routledge, 2025). During the Renaissance, clothing became more and more elaborately decorated and expensive. It often emphasised the privilege of the male elite. Yet clothing could also subvert or reshape conventional cultural norms. Th
Shilla Lee , "Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization" (Routledge, 2024)
Centering collaborations and frictions around a Japanese town’s pottery industry, Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization (Routledge, 2024)n discusses the place of creative village policy in the revitalization of rural Japan, highlighting how rural Japan is moving from a state of regional extinction to regional rejuvenation.
Using the case study of
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