Best Lauren Khan Podcasts (2024)

1
Lauren Benton, "They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence" (Princeton UP, 2024) 51:49

10h ago51:49

51:49

A sweeping account of how small wars shaped global order in the age of empires. Imperial conquest and colonization depended on pervasive raiding, slaving, and plunder. European empires amassed global power by asserting a right to use unilateral force at their discretion. They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence (Princeton UP, 2024) is a pa…

1
James Madison and the Spirit of Self-Government: A Conversation with Colleen Sheehan 55:44

11h ago55:44

55:44

Who was James Madison? Why were his Notes on Government so valuable to the American founding? Did James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington all achieve what Sheehan calls “Civic Friendship”? Colleen Sheehan joins Madison’s Notes to discuss her seminal works on James Madison: The Mind of James Madison: The Legacy of Classical Republic…

1
Marissa Nicosia, "Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660" (Oxford UP, 2023) 46:09

2d ago46:09

46:09

Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660 (Oxford University Press, 2023) argues that dramatic narratives about monarchy and succession codified speculative futures in the early modern English cultural imaginary. This book considers chronicle plays—plays written for the public stage and play pamphlets composed when…

1
Murad Khan Mumtaz, "Faces of God: Images of Devotion in Indo-Muslim Painting, 1500-1800" (Brill, 2023) 32:40

5d ago32:40

32:40

Islamic art is often misrepresented as an iconophobic tradition. As a result of this assumption, the polyvalence of figural artworks made for South Asian Muslim audiences has remained hidden in plain view. Faces of God: Images of Devotion in Indo-Muslim Painting, 1500-1800 (Brill, 2023) situates manuscript illustrations and album paintings within c…

1
Roger Crowley, "Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World" (Yale UP, 2024) 54:31

12d ago54:31

54:31

The spice islands: Specks of land in the Indonesian archipelago that were the exclusive home of cloves, commodities once worth their weight in gold. The Portuguese got there first, persuading the Spanish to fund expeditions trying to go the other direction, sailing westward across the Atlantic. Roger Crowley, in his new book Spice: The 16th-Century…

1
Tim Cooper, "When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter" (Crossway, 2024) 35:38

14d ago35:38

35:38

Our current culture seems to be increasingly divided on countless issues, including those affecting the church. But for centuries, theological disagreements, political differences, and issues relating to church leadership have made it challenging for Christians to foster unity and love for one another. In When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the …

1
Richard D. Oram, "Where Men No More May Reap Or Sow: The Little Ice Age: Scotland 1400-1850" (Birlinn, 2024) 1:13:57

14d ago1:13:57

1:13:57

Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland explores the interaction of human populations with the land, waters, forests and wildlife. Where Men No More May Reap or Sow: The Little Ice Age: Scotland 1400–1850 (Birlinn, 2024) by Dr. Richard D. Or…

1
Kristie Flannery, "Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) 59:13

16d ago59:13

59:13

Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) offers a new interpretation of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippine islands. Drawing on the rich archives of Spain’s Asian empire, Dr. Kristie Patricia Flannery reveals that Spanish colonial officials and Catholic missionaries forged alliances with Indige…

1
Anton Howes, "Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation" (Princeton UP, 2020) 1:10:57

22d ago1:10:57

1:10:57

Over the past 300 years, The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has tried to improve British life in every way imaginable. It has sought to influence education, commerce, music, art, architecture, communications, food, and every other corner of society. Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nati…

1
Michael J. Douma, "The Slow Death of Slavery in Dutch New York: A Cultural, Economic, and Demographic History, 1700-1827" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 51:29

24d ago51:29

51:29

Original and deeply researched, The Slow Death of Slavery in Dutch New York: A Cultural, Economic, and Demographic History, 1700-1827 (Cambridge University Press, 2024) provides a new interpretation of Dutch American slavery which challenges many of the traditional assumptions about slavery in New York. With an emphasis on demography and economics,…

1
Pekka Hämäläinen, "Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power" (Yale UP, 2019) 40:02

24d ago40:02

40:02

The names of Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse are often readily recognized among many Americans. Yet the longer, dynamic history of the Lakota - a history from which these three famous figures were created - remains largely untold. In Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power (Yale, 2019), historian Pekka Hämäläinen, author of The C…

1
Laura Moretti and Satō Yukiko, "Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan: The World of Kusazōshi" (Brill, 2024) 1:03:36

25d ago1:03:36

1:03:36

Part of a formidable publishing industry, cheap yet eye-catching graphic narratives consistently charmed early modern Japanese readers for around two hundred years. These booklets were called kusazōshi (“grass books”). Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan: The World of Kusazōshi (Brill, 2024) is the first English-language publication of its k…

1
Nuria Silleras-Fernandez, "The Politics of Emotion: Love, Grief, and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia" (Cornell UP, 2024) 1:00:17

28d ago1:00:17

1:00:17

The Politics of Emotion: Love, Grief, and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Dr. Nuria Silleras-Fernandez explores the intersection of powerful emotional states—love, melancholy, grief, and madness—with gender and political power on the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. U…

1
Emily Wilbourne, "Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:07:06

1M ago1:07:06

1:07:06

Grounded in new archival research documenting a significant presence of foreign and racially-marked individuals in Medici Florence, Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Emily Wilbourne argues for the relevance of such individuals to the history of Western music and for the importance of sou…

1
Jacob Lee, "Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi" (Harvard UP, 2019) 1:33:50

1M ago1:33:50

1:33:50

America’s waterways were once the superhighways of travel and communication. Coursing through a central line across the landscape, with tributaries connecting the South to the Great Plains and the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River meant wealth, knowledge, and power for those who could master it. In Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and …

1
Toby Green, "A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2019) 49:04

1M ago49:04

49:04

All too often, the history of early modern Africa is told from the perspective of outsiders. In his book A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Toby Green draws upon a range of underutilized sources to describe the evolution of West Africa over a period of four…

1
Mark Peterson, "The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power" (Princeton UP, 2019) 2:23:07

1M ago2:23:07

2:23:07

In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired clichés, The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power (Princeton University Press, 2019), highli…

1
James D. Fisher, "The Enclosure of Knowledge: Books, Power and Agrarian Capitalism in Britain, 1660–1800" (Cambridge UP, 2022) 56:20

1M ago56:20

56:20

The rise of agrarian capitalism in Britain is usually told as a story about markets, land and wages. The Enclosure of Knowledge: Books, Power and Agrarian Capitalism in Britain, 1660–1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. James Fisher reveals that it was also about books, knowledge and expertise. It argues that during the early modern perio…

1
Ed Simon, "Devil's Contract: A History of the Faustian Bargain" (Melville House, 2024) 50:31

1M ago50:31

50:31

From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain—the exchange of one’s soul in return for untold riches and power—has exerted a magnetic pull upon our collective imaginations. In Devil's Contract: A History of the Faustian Bargain (Melville House, 2024), Dr. Ed Simon takes us on a historical tour of the Faustian bargain, fro…

1
Tabitha Stanmore, "Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic" (Bloombury, 2024) 33:13

1M ago33:13

33:13

Imagine: it's the year 1600 and you've lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they've been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you're facing a trial. Maybe you're looking for love or escaping a husband. What do you do? In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might have been cunning folk: practitioners of “service mag…

1
Elizabeth Storr Cohen and Marlee J. Couling, "Non-Elite Women's Networks Across the Early Modern World" (Amsterdam UP, 2023) 47:33

1M ago47:33

47:33

Elizabeth Cohen, Professor Emerita at York University, joins Jana Byars to talk about her new volume, Non-Elite Women's Networks Across the Early Modern World (Amsterdam University Press, 2023), edited with Marilee Couling. Non-elite or marginalized early modern women-among them the poor, migrants, members of religious or ethnic minorities, abused …

1
Timothy Grieve-Carlson, "American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:05:11

1M ago1:05:11

1:05:11

American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius (Oxford UP, 2024) explores the impact of climate change on early modern radical religious groups during the height of the Little Ice Age in the seventeenth century. Focusing on the life and legacy of Johannes Kelpius (1667-1707), an enormously influential but comprehensivel…

1
Jeremy Black, "Defoe's Britain" (St. Augustine's Press, 2023) 24:15

1M ago24:15

24:15

The Weight of Words Series continues with Defoe's Britain (St. Augustine's Press, 2023), as historian Jeremy Black uses this writer to interpret Britain in the late 1600s, and likewise looks to the times to interpret the fiction. As seen in previous studies on Christie, Smollett, Fielding, and the Gothic novelists, Black tells the story of the stor…

1
Denva Gallant, "Illuminating the Vitae Patrum: The Lives of Desert Saints in Fourteenth-Century Italy" (Penn State UP, 2024) 52:54

2M ago52:54

52:54

During the fourteenth century in Western Europe, there was a growing interest in imitating the practices of a group of hermits known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Laypeople and religious alike learned about their rituals not only through readings from the Vitae Patrum (Lives of the Desert Fathers) and sermons but also through the images that b…

1
Matthew Goldmark, "Forms of Relation: Composing Kinship in Colonial Spanish America" (U Virginia Press, 2023) 39:32

2M ago39:32

39:32

Drawing on literary texts, conversion manuals, and colonial correspondence from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and Peru, Forms of Relation: Composing Kinship in Colonial Spanish America (University of Virginia, 2023) shows the importance of textual, religious, and bureaucratic ties to struggles over colonial governance and identities. Dr.…

1
Nicola Clark, "The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens" (Norton, 2024) 59:57

2M ago59:57

59:57

Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held a unique power. A quiet word behind the scenes, an a…

1
Matthijs Lok, "Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 56:51

2M ago56:51

56:51

Contemporary Europe seems to be divided between progressive cosmopolitans sympathetic to the European Union and the ideals of the Enlightenment, and counter-enlightened conservative nationalists extolling the virtues of homelands threatened by globalised elites and mass migration. Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Maki…

1
Henry Reece, "The Fall: The Last Days of the English Republic" (Yale UP, 2024) 36:11

2M ago36:11

36:11

Why did England's one experiment in republican rule fail? Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivalled turmoil and confusion in English history. In less than two years, there were close to ten changes of government; rival armies of Englishmen faced each other across the Scottish border; and the Long Parliament was finally dissolve…

1
Judith Vitale et al., "Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan" (Brill, 2023) 1:13:15

2M ago1:13:15

1:13:15

In early modern Japan, upper status groups coveted pills and powders made of exotic foreign ingredients such as mummy and rhinoceros horn. By the early twentieth century, over-the-counter-patent medicines, and, more alarmingly, morphine, had become mass commodities, fueling debates over opiates in Japan's expanding imperial territories. The fall of…

1
Genji Yasuhira, "Catholic Survival in the Dutch Republic: Agency in Coexistence and the Public Sphere in Utrecht, 1620-1672" (Amsterdam UP, 2024) 1:04:49

2M ago1:04:49

1:04:49

Even in adversity, Catholics exercised considerable agency in post-Reformation Utrecht. Through the political practices of repression and toleration, Utrecht’s magistrates, under constant pressure from the Reformed Church, attempted to exclude Catholics from the urban public sphere. However, by mobilising their social status and networks, Catholic …

1
Harry R. McCarthy, "Boy Actors in Early Modern England" (Cambridge UP, 2022) 44:27

2M ago44:27

44:27

Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Harry McCarthy provides a new approach to the study of early modern boy actors, offering a historical re-appraisal of these performers' physical skills in order to reassess their wide-reaching contribution to early modern theatrical cul…

1
Carlos M. N. Eire, "They Flew: A History of the Impossible" (Yale UP, 2023) 53:57

2M ago53:57

53:57

In the early modern era, seemingly impossible stories of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft were common and believable. The important question of the time was not if these things happened, but why. This was particularly true as the rise of Protestantism began to challenge Catholic beliefs in miracles and continued to be the case even after scie…

1
Sudev Sheth, "Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 52:36

2M ago52:36

52:36

Running and securing an empire can get expensive–especially one known for its opulence, like the Mughal Empire, which conquered much of northern India before rapidly declining in the eighteenth century. But how did the Mughals get their money? Often, it was through wealthy merchants, like the Jhaveri family, who willingly—and then not-so-willingly–…

1
Chloe Wigston Smith, "Novels, Needleworks, and Empire: Material Entanglements in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World" (Yale UP, 2024) 51:22

2M ago51:22

51:22

In the eighteenth century, women’s contributions to empire took fewer official forms than those collected in state archives. Their traces were recorded in material ways, through the ink they applied to paper or the artefacts they created with muslin, silk threads, feathers, and shells. Handiwork, such as sewing, knitting, embroidery, and other craf…

1
Bronagh Ann McShane, "Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700: Suppression, Migration and Reintegration" (Boydell & Brewer, 2022) 37:56

2M ago37:56

37:56

Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700: Suppression, Migration and Reintegration (Boydell & Brewer, 2022) by Dr. Bronagh Ann McShane investigates the impact of the dissolution of the monasteries on women religious and examines their survival in the following decades, showing how, despite the state's official proscription of vocation living, rel…

1
Joseph A. Skloot, "First Impressions: Sefer Hasidim and Early Modern Hebrew Printing" (Brandeis UP, 2023) 56:29

2M ago56:29

56:29

Joseph A. Skloot joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, First Impressions: Sefer hasimdim and Early Modern Hebrew Printing (Brandeis UP, 2023). First Impressions uncovers the history of creative adaptation and transformation through a close analysis of the creation of the Sefer Hasidim book. In 1538, a partnership of Jewish silk makers in the…

1
Vince Brown, Caribbean Vectors (EF, JP) 45:51

2M ago45:51

45:51

The largest slave uprising in the 18th century British Caribbean was also a node of the global conflict called the Seven Year’s War, though it isn’t usually thought of that way. In the first few days of the quarantine and our current geopolitical and epidemiological shitshow, John and Elizabeth spoke with Vincent Brown, who recently published Tacky…

1
Matthew Kadane, "The Enlightenment and Original Sin" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 55:14

3M ago55:14

55:14

Matthew Kadane, Professor of History at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, talks about his just new book, The Enlightenment and Original Sin (University of Chicago Press, 2024). An eloquent microhistory that argues for the centrality of the doctrine of original sin to the Enlightenment. What was the Enlightenment? This question has been endlessly d…

1
Stephanie Joy Mawson, "Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines" (Cornell UP, 2023) 49:19

3M ago49:19

49:19

"When the Spanish colonization of the Philippines began in 1565, early reports boasted of mass conversions to Christianity and ever-increasing numbers of people paying tribute to the Spanish crown. This suggests an uncomplicated story of an easy imposition of Spanish sovereignty. But as Stephanie Mawson shows in her book, Incomplete Conquests: The …

1
Iris Moon, "Melancholy Wedgwood" (MIT Press, 2024) 1:12:18

3M ago1:12:18

1:12:18

Melancholy Wedgwood (MIT Press, 2024) is an experimental biography of the ceramics entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood that reveals the tenuous relationship of eighteenth-century England to late-capitalist modernity. It traces the multiple strands in the life of the ceramic entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) to propose an alternative view of eightee…

1
Yehonatan Eybeshitz, "Pearls of Wisdom from Rabbi Yehonatan Eybeshitz: Torah Giant, Preacher & Kabbalist" (Gerber's Miracle Publishers, 2021) 31:14

3M ago31:14

31:14

Rabbi Yehonatan Eybeshitz was one of the greatest rabbis of the eighteenth century. Even as a child, he was renowned as one of the rare geniuses of his time. Among the most revered Torah scholars of the last 300 years, Rabbi Eybeshitz was also a prolific writer, preacher, and Kabbalah master. His innumerable writings cover all areas of Jewish Learn…

1
Jason A. Kerr, "Milton's Theological Process: Reading de Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost" (Oxford UP, 2023) 32:42

3M ago32:42

32:42

This volume proposes a method for reading Milton's De Doctrina Christiana as an artifact of his process of theological thinking rather than as a repository of his doctrinal views. Jason A. Kerr argues that reading in this way involves attention to the complex material state of the manuscript along with Milton's varying modes of engagement with scri…

1
Assaf Tamari, "God as Patient: The Medical Discourse of Lurianic Kabbalah" (Magnes Press, 2023) 40:56

3M ago40:56

40:56

In a broken world, in which even God Himself is in a state of deep crisis, what is required in order to mend the rupture? How can one heal God and His world? Moreover, what might allow our actions to be effective? These questions stand at the heart of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the apex of the Safedian intellectual and religious renaissance of the sixt…

1
Priya Satia, "Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution" (Bloomsbury, 2019) 53:36

3M ago53:36

53:36

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one dominated by industry, ushering in unprecedented growth in technology and trade and putting the country at the center of the global economy. But the commonly accepted story of the industrial revolution, anc…

1
Ambereen Dadabhoy, "Shakespeare Through Islamic Worlds" (Routledge, 2023) 1:05:20

3M ago1:05:20

1:05:20

Shakespeare through Islamic Worlds (Routledge, 2024) investigates the peculiar absence of Islam and Muslims from Shakespeare’s canon. While many of Shakespeare’s plays were set in the Mediterranean, a geography occupied by Muslim empires and cultures, his work eschews direct engagement with the religion and its people. This erasure is striking give…

1
Lauren Horn Griffin, "Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England: History, Rhetoric, and the Origins of Christianity" (Brill, 2023) 32:26

3M ago32:26

32:26

Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England: History, Rhetoric, and the Origins of Christianity (Brill, 2023) argues that in order to understand nationalisms, we need a clearer understanding of the types of cultural myths, symbols, and traditions that legitimate them. Myths of origin and election, memories of a greater and purer past, and narrativ…

1
Scott W. Gregory, "Bandits in Print: The Water Margin and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel" (Cornell UP, 2023) 52:09

3M ago52:09

52:09

Bandits in Print: "The Water Margin" and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel (Cornell UP, 2023) uses the classic novel The Water Margin (Shuihu Zhuan) to examine the world of print in early modern China. Scott W. Gregory traces the way this beloved novel about outlaw heroes, honor, corruption, and brotherhood was adapted and changed by differe…

1
Joanne Edge, "Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain: Questioning Life, Predicting Death" (York Medieval Press, 2024) 1:07:25

3M ago1:07:25

1:07:25

When will I die? What is the sex of my unborn child? Which of two rivals will win a duel? As today, people in the later Middle Ages approached their uncertainties about the future, from the serious to the mundane, in a variety of ways. One of the most commonly surviving prognostic methods in medieval manuscripts is onomancy: the branch of divinatio…

1
Lucy Barnhouse, "Hospitals in Communities of the Late Medieval Rhineland" (Amsterdam UP, 2023) 1:09:24

3M ago1:09:24

1:09:24

Lucy Barnhouse of Arkansas State University talks with Jana Byars about her new book, Hospitals in Communities of the Late Medieval Rhineland: Houses of God, Places for the Sick, out 2023 with Amsterdam University Press. From the mid-twelfth century onwards, the development of European hospitals was shaped by their claim to the legal status of reli…

1
Francesca Trivellato, "The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society" (Princeton UP, 2019) 1:02:04

3M ago1:02:04

1:02:04

In 1647, the French author Étienne Cleirac asserted in his book Les us, et coustumes de la mer that the credit instruments known as bills of exchange had been invented by Jews. In The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton University Press, 2019…

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