Best Kristine Reilly Podcasts (2025)

1
Dominik Zechner, "The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) 43:22

3h ago43:22

43:22

The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) expounds the scene of reading as one that produces an overwhelmed body exposed to uncontainable forms of violence. The book argues that the act of reading induces a representational instability that causes the referential function of language to c…

1
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays and Writings" (Harper, 2025) 44:47

20h ago44:47

44:47

The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfiction debut with this personal and thought-provoking work that explores the journeys and possibilities of Black women throughout American history and in contemporary times. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a cr…

1
Emily Hauser, "Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It" (Univ of Chicago Press, 2025) 55:39

2d ago55:39

55:39

Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in the past three millennia. But these are not just tales about heroic men. There are scores of women as well—complex, fascinating women whose stories have gone unexplored for far too long. In Penelope’…

1
Carolin Duttlinger, "Attention and Distraction in Modern German Literature, Thought, and Culture" (Oxford UP, 2022) 1:02:45

4d ago1:02:45

1:02:45

Carolin Duttlinger is Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford (UK) and Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre, where she is currently leading a three-year UKRI-funded research project,Kafka's Transformative Communities. She has published widely on German literature from the eighteenth century to the present; …

1
Surindar Nath Pandita, "डान् क्विक्षोटः Don Quixote" (Pune, 2024) 52:27

12d ago52:27

52:27

The present book contains a facsimile edition of a unique modern Kashmiri translation of five chapters from Cervantes’s famous Don Quijote. In this book the Kashmiri translation and the corresponding parts of Jarvis’s English version are presented on facing pages. The Kashmiri text is reproduced as a facsimile of the autograph prepared by Pandit Ja…

1
Amie Souza Reilly, "Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2025) 41:36

12d ago41:36

41:36

Amie Souza Reilly bought an old house in the suburbs. She had just gotten remarried and was looking forward to a new start with her new husband and her six-year-old son. But immediately after moving in, the next-door neighbors began a crusade to push them out. The two brothers followed her, peered in her windows, stood in her yard, trapped her insi…

1
Sladja Blažan, "Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America" (University of Virginia Press, 2025) 53:18

11d ago53:18

53:18

In Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America (University of Virginia Press, 2025), Dr. Sladja Blažan explains the foundational role of ghost stories in fostering the cultural imaginary, offering a medium for framing political ideologies, philosophical thought, racial anxieties, and social concerns. Ghosts and …

1
Paola De Santo and Caterina Mongiat Farina, (eds. and trans.) Isabella Andreini, "Letters" (Iter Press, 2023) 58:26

12d ago58:26

58:26

Isabella Andreini, Letters, ed. and trans. Paola De Santo and Caterina Mongiat Farina. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Iter Press of the University of Toronto, 2023. Winner of the Josephine Roberts Award for a Scholarly Edition (2024) from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender Welcome! My guest is Professor Paola Da San…

1
152 Why I Paneled: A Backwards Glance by Kristin Mahoney and Nasser Mufti (JP) 44:01

14d ago44:01

44:01

In RTB 151, you heard the Kristin, Nasser and John discussing what might happen before their Northeastern Victorian Studies Association conference actually took place. This episode, recorded a few weeks later, looks back at what actually occurred and see how it aligned with or defied the panelists' prior expectations. The three discuss what it mean…

1
Kevin Potter, "Poetics of the Migrant: Migrant Literature and the Politics of Motion" (Edinburgh UP, 2023) 1:07:22

13d ago1:07:22

1:07:22

Since the 1980s, readers and scholars alike have celebrated migrant literature for not only depicting migration, but for inspiring reflections on class, race, gender, nations, and mobility. But, beyond depicting migration, is it possible for migrant literature to be a force of movement itself? Poetics of the Migrant: Migrant Literature and the Poli…

1
151 Why I Panel, Part One: Kristin Mahoney, Nasser Mufti (JP) 32:43

14d ago32:43

32:43

Most scholars are both haunted, even undone, by the task of writing papers for peers and traveling to strange campuses to deliver them. Yet we keep it up--we inflict it on our peers, we inflict it on ourselves. Why? To answer that question, Recall This Book assembled three (if you count John) scholars of Victorian literature asked to speak at the S…

1
Andy Oler, "Old-Fashioned Modernism: Rural Masculinity and Midwestern Literature" (LSU Press, 2019) 53:14

18d ago53:14

53:14

In light of recent conversations about the crisis of masculinity, let's revisit Dr. Andy Oler's book Old-Fashioned Modernism: Rural Masculinity and Midwestern Literature. I sat down with Dr. Oler to discuss the persistent anxiety about masculinity, the role of regional literature in American modernism, and the need for an expansive definition of th…

1
Pooja Rangan, Akshya Saxena, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Pavitra Sundar eds., "Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice" (UC Press, 2023) 1:06:21

19d ago1:06:21

1:06:21

Everyone speaks with an accent, but what is an accent? Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (UC Press, 2023) introduces accent as a powerfully coded yet underexplored mode of perception that includes looking, listening, acting, reading, and thinking. This volume convenes scholars of media, literature, education, law, l…

1
Basma Al Dajani, "The Arab Andalusian Love Poetry: A Study of the Interaction Between Place and Man Through Time" (AU Cairo Press, 1994) 34:12

20d ago34:12

34:12

In this episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Basma A. S. Dajani, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, in a sweeping conversation on Arab-Andalusian love poetry and the cultural, linguistic, and emotional legacies it continues to inspire. Rooted in her 1994 book The Arab Andalusian Love Poetry: A Study of the Inte…

1
Jon L. Pitt, "Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan" (Cornell UP, 2025) 47:13

20d ago47:13

47:13

Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the complicated legacy and enduring lure of plant life in modern Japanese literature and media. Using critical plant studies, Jon L. Pitt examines an unlikely group of writers and filmmakers in modern Japan, finding in their works a desire to "become …

1
Jonas Elbousty and Roger Allen, "Reading Mohamed Choukri's Narratives: Hunger in Eden" (Routledge, 2024) 1:05:00

22d ago1:05:00

1:05:00

Reading Mohamed Choukri’s Narratives: Hunger in Eden (Routledge, 2024) presents an intricate exploration into the life and literary universe of Mohamed Choukri, a towering figure in 20th-century Moroccan literature. Known primarily for his groundbreaking autobiographical work “al-Khubz al-Ḥāfī” (For Bread Alone), Choukri’s literary influence extend…

1
Jane Elizabeth Dougherty, "Narrating Irish Female Development, 1916-2018" (Edinburgh UP, 2024) 49:08

23d ago49:08

49:08

Narrating Irish Female Development, 1916-2018 (Edinburgh UP, 2024) studies narratives of Irish female and feminized development, arguing that these postmodern narratives present Irish female maturation as disordered and often deliberately disorderly. The first full-length study of the Irish female coming of age story, the book develops a feminist p…

1
Laura Otis, "Banned Emotions: How Metaphors Can Shape What People Feel" (Oxford UP, 2019) 35:21

24d ago35:21

35:21

Who benefits and who loses when emotions are described in particular ways? How do metaphors such as "hold on" and "let go" affect people's emotional experiences? Banned Emotions: How Metaphors Can Shape What People Feel (Oxford UP, 2019), written by neuroscientist-turned-literary scholar Laura Otis, draws on the latest research in neuroscience and …

1
Christopher Hanscom, "Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film" (Columbia UP, 2024) 1:11:14

26d ago1:11:14

1:11:14

How does art engage with its social context? What does 'the politics of art' even mean? In his new book Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2023), Christopher P. Hanscom takes on these questions in the context of contemporary Korean literature. Moving away from rea…

1
Hannah Jeans, "Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England" (U London Press, 2025) 50:13

27d ago50:13

50:13

In Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England (University of London Press, 2025), Hannah Jeans explores the reading habits of early modern women and the ways in which their reading became a site of identity formation and promotion. Jeans studies both contemporary prescriptions around women's reading, particularly their consumption …

1
Dan Sperrin, "State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature" (Princeton UP, 2025) 53:06

29d ago53:06

53:06

Satire is a funny, aggressive, and largely oppositional literature which is typically created by people who refuse to participate in a given regime’s perception of itself. Although satire has always been a primary literature of state affairs, and although it has always been used to intervene in ongoing discussions about political theory and practic…

1
Who Owns These Tools? Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde (SW) 50:58

29d ago50:58

50:58

In an essay about her recent book Searches (Pantheon, 2025), a genre-bending chronicle of the deeply personal ways we use the internet and the uncanny ways it uses us, Vauhini Vara admits that several reviewers seemed to mistake her engagement with ChatGPT as an uncritical embrace of large language models. Enter Aarthi Vadde to talk with Vauhini ab…

1
Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir, "Ghosts, Trolls, and the Hidden People: An Anthology of Icelandic Folk Legends" (Reaktion, 2025) 49:44

1M ago49:44

49:44

Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Ghosts, Trolls, and Hidden People: An Anthology of Icelandic Folk Legends (Reaktion, 2025). This unique and enchanting book opens the door to a captivating world of Icelandic folk legends. The six chapters of this anthology are each based on a different setting: farm, wilderness, da…

1
Carrie Helms Tippen, "Unpalatable: Stories of Pain and Pleasure in Southern Cookbooks" (UP of Mississippi, 2025) 1:17:09

1M ago1:17:09

1:17:09

The cookbook genre is highly conventional with an orientation toward celebration and success. From glossy photographs to heartwarming stories and adjective-rich ingredient lists, the cookbook tradition primes readers for pleasure. Yet the overarching narrative of the region is often one of pain, loss, privation, exploitation, poverty, and suffering…

1
Pāṇḍitya: Mapping Sanskrit Texts Online 49:25

1M ago49:25

49:25

Tyler Neill discusses the new platform Pāṇḍitya, an online graph visualization tool illustrating connections between works and authors in the Pandit Prosopographical Database of Indic Texts. It also facilitates exploration of the Sanskrit E-Text Inventory (SETI) as an overlay on the Pandit network. Tyler's blog "Sanskrit and Tech with Tyler" is her…

1
Noel Rubinton, "Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee" (Princeton UP, 2025) 46:51

1M ago46:51

46:51

John McPhee has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1965 and has written more than thirty acclaimed books that began on the magazine's pages. But few readers know or fully appreciate the true breadth of his writing. Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee (Princeton University Press, 2025) leads readers through…

1
Steve McCauley on Barbara Pym: The Comic Novel Explored and Adored (JP) 30:31

1M ago30:31

30:31

Back in 2019, John spoke with the celebrated comic novelist Stephen McCauley. Nobody knows more about the comic novel than Steve--his latest is You Only Call When You're in Trouble, but John still holds a candle for his 1987 debut, Object of My Affection, made into a charming Jennifer Aniston Paul Rudd movie. And there is no comic novelist Steve lo…

1
James B. Haile III, "The Dark Delight of Being Strange: Black Stories of Freedom" (Columbia UP, 2024) 1:18:30

1M ago1:18:30

1:18:30

An ambitious genre-crossing exploration of Black speculative imagination, The Dark Delight of Being Strange: Black Stories of Freedom (Columbia University Press 2024) combines fiction, historical accounts, and philosophical prose to unveil the extraordinary and the surreal in everyday Black life. In a series of stories and essays, James B. Haile, I…

1
Daniel Behar, "Syrian Poets and Vernacular Modernity" (Edinburgh UP, 2025) 29:32

1M ago29:32

29:32

Syrian Poets and Vernacular Modernity (Edinburgh UP, 2025) examines a poetic movement that rose from under official state discourse in 1970s Syria Closely examines a wealth of unknown primary poetic texts from Syria that make up a new poetics which challenges received ideas about modern Arabic poetry Rereads along transnational lines the works of f…

1
Myka Tucker-Abramson, "Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony" (Stanford UP, 2025) 59:54

1M ago59:54

59:54

The road novel is often dismissed as a mundane, nostalgic genre: Jack, Sal, and other tedious white men on the road trying to recapture an authentic youth and American past that never existed. Yet, new road novels appear every year, tackling unexpected questions and spanning new geographies, from Mexico, Brazil, Bulgaria, Palestine, Ukraine, and fo…

1
Anna Wainwright, "Widow City: Gender, Emotion, and Community in the Italian Renaissance" (U Delaware Press, 2025) 55:11

1M ago55:11

55:11

Widow City: Gender, Emotion, and Community in Renaissance Italy (University of Delaware Press, 2025) investigates the ever-evolving role of the widow in medieval and early modern Italian literature, from canonical authors such as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, to the numerous widowed writers who rose to prominence in the sixteenth century—includin…

1
Mike Miley, "David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 58:46

1M ago58:46

58:46

How are David Lynch's films as much in dialogue with literary and musical traditions as they are cinematic ones? By interrogating this question, David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2025) broadens the interpretive horizons of Lynch's filmography, calling for a new approach to Lynch's films that goes beyond cinem…

1
Seulghee Lee, "Other Lovings: An Afroasian American Theory of Life" (Ohio State UP, 2025) 42:33

1M ago42:33

42:33

Join me for a conversation with Dr. Seulghee Lee (Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English, University of South Carolina) about his recently published book, Other Lovings: An AfroAsian American Theory of Life (Ohio State UP, 2025). Some topics of our discussion include Adrian Tomine's graphic novel Shortcomings (2007), Gayl Jones…

1
“That In Between Time,” Fernanda Trías and Heather Cleary (MAT) 54:05

1M ago54:05

54:05

Fernanda Trías’s Pink Slime (Scribner, 2024) was first published in Spanish in October 2020, several months into a global pandemic that had bent our world into something uncannily similar to the one imagined in the Uruguayan writer’s fourth novel. Here, an environmental disaster that begins as red algae bloom in the oceans has produced a toxic wind…

1
Samuel Jay Keyser, "Play It Again, Sam: Repetition in the Arts" (MIT Press, 2025) 1:05:20

1M ago1:05:20

1:05:20

Leonard Bernstein, in his famous Norton Lectures, extolled repetition, saying that it gave poetry its musical qualities and that music theorists' refusal to take it seriously did so at their peril. In Play It Again, Sam: Repetition in the Arts (MIT Press, 2025), Samuel Jay Keyser explores in detail the way repetition works in poetry, music, and pai…

1
Nothingism 20:23

1M ago20:23

20:23

In this episode of High Theory, Jason Schneiderman talks about Nothingism. A term of his own coinage, a tongue-in-cheek manifesto, nothingism is an invitation to refuse the values of digital culture in favor of the values of print. You can read more about poetry at the end of print culture in Jason’s new book, entitled Nothingism (Michigan UP, 2025…

1
Robin Miles: Talking Books 1:14:29

2M ago1:14:29

1:14:29

Today we bring you a masterclass in audiobook narration and acting with acclaimed actor, casting director, audiobook narrator and audiobook director, Robin Miles. Miles has narrated over 500 audiobooks, collecting numerous industry awards and, in 2017, was added to the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame. She’s the most recognizable voice in literary Afr…

1
Charlie English, "The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War" (Random House, 2025) 47:32

2M ago47:32

47:32

For nearly five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, forming the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the war was fought psychologically. It was a battle for hearts, minds, and intell…

1
Paul Chrystal, "Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome" (Reaktion, 2025) 58:56

2M ago58:56

58:56

Both humorous and shocking, Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome (Reaktion, 2025) by Paul Crystal is filled with astonishing facts and stories drawn from ancient Greece and Rome that have rarely been retold in English. It explores ‘the incredible’ as presented by little-known classical writers like Callimachus and Phlego…

1
Monika Amsler, "The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 1:06:42

2M ago1:06:42

1:06:42

The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture (Cambridge UP, 2023) argues that the Talmud must be read and understood in the broader context of late ancient discursive and material contexts of books, rhetoric, and technology. As Dr. Amsler’s work reveals, the structure and form of the Talmud point to knowledge and mastery of rhetorical traini…

1
Tithi Bhattacharya, "Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal" (Duke UP, 2024) 38:20

2M ago38:20

38:20

In Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal (Duke UP, 2024), Tithi Bhattacharya maps the role that Bengali ghosts and ghost stories played in constituting the modern Indian nation, and the religious ideas seeded therein, as it emerged in dialogue with European science. Bhattacharya introduces readers to the mul…

1
Shailendra Kumar Singh, "Between Resistance and Conformity: Premchand’s Fiction in Colonial North India" (Routledge, 2024) 54:27

2M ago54:27

54:27

Shailendra Kumar Singh’s Between Resistance and Conformity: Premchand’s Fiction in Colonial North India (Routledge, 2024) examines the questions of conformity and resistance with respect to Premchand’s literary corpus. Mapping the various complexities, challenges, and contradictions of interwar India, it demonstrates how the passive peasant protago…

1
Polly Jones, "Gulag Fiction: Labour Camp Literature from Stalin to Putin" (Bloombury, 2024) 1:16:44

2M ago1:16:44

1:16:44

Gulag Fiction: Labour Camp Literature from Stalin to Putin (Bloombury, 2024) is a unique exploration of Russian prose fiction about the Soviet labour camp system since the Stalin era compares representations of identity, ethics and memory across the corpus. The Soviet labour camp system, or Gulag, was a highly complex network of different types of …

1
Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (JP) 50:52

2M ago50:52

50:52

In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction—only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, KSR has established a conceptual space a…

1
Eike Exner, "Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History" (Rutgers UP, 2021) 46:34

2M ago46:34

46:34

Japanese comics, commonly known as manga, are a global sensation. Critics, scholars, and everyday readers have often viewed this artform through an Orientalist framework, treating manga as the exotic antithesis to American and European comics. In reality, the history of manga is deeply intertwined with Japan’s avid importation of Western technology…

1
Alexandra Popoff, "Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century" (Yale UP, 2019) 1:09:42

2M ago1:09:42

1:09:42

Memory and truth are malleable and nowhere more so than in the Soviet Union. To be a writer in that country was to face an ongoing dilemma: conform to State-mandated topics and themes, or consign oneself to obscurity, writing only for “the desk drawer” or “without permission.” Vasily Grossman challenged that binary choice, creating some of the most…

1
Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022) 1:21:26

2M ago1:21:26

1:21:26

In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words, and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intel…

1
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, ed., "We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn" (U Notre Dame Press, 2025) 46:19

2M ago46:19

46:19

We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (U Notre Dame Press, 2025) brings together ten of Nobel Prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s most memorable and consequential speeches, delivered in the West and in Russia between 1972 and 1997. Following his exile from the USSR in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived an…

1
Book Talk 65 Emily Dickinson, with Sharon Cameron 1:44:29

2M ago1:44:29

1:44:29

We need Emily Dickinson’s startling originality today more than ever. This is why I sat down with Sharon Cameron, one of the greatest commentators on Dickinson’s poetry, to explore some of Dickinson’s poems in an extra-long podcast. “It’s astonishing that after forty years of reading Dickinson, I am still ‘awed beyond my errand’ by how Dickinson’s …

1
Yellowlees Douglas, "Writing for the Reader's Brain: A Science-Based Guide" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:01:55

2M ago1:01:55

1:01:55

What makes one sentence easy to read and another a slog that demands re-reading? Where do you put information you want readers to recall? Drawing on cognitive neuroscience, psychology and psycholinguistics, Writing for the Reader’s Brain (Cambridge University Press, 2025) provides a practical, how-to guide on how to write for your reader. It introd…

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