Progressive Geographies

Leslie C. Dunn and Avi Mendelson eds. Shakespeare and Early Modern Madness – Springer, May 2026

Shakespeare and Early Modern Madness, the first collection to focus on madness and mental health in early modern drama, is energized by the belief that madness is a variable concept, situated among a rapidly shifting series of cultural vectors. In addition to investigating the ubiquity of mental health tropes in Shakespearean theater, and their appearance in plays by Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe, the volume showcases Renaissance madness’s impressive variety: its affiliation with mental states as different as demonic possession, melancholic dreams, ecstasy and rapture, rage and fury, excessive grief, and aesthetic pleasure. The essays further demonstrate that madness in early modern drama can be approached through a diverse array of critical perspectives; their authors pull not only from historicist methodologies, disability studies, mad studies, and theories of gender and race, but also from the psychological and psychiatric sciences. The volume concludes with a section on activism and pedagogy, which asks how we can use early modern plays to promote the inclusion of students and scholars with lived experience of neurodiversity. 

Hans Demeyer and Sven Vitse, Affective Crisis and the Possibility of Attachment: A Comparative Study of Contemporary Fiction in Neoliberal Ruins – UCL Press, April 2026 (print and open access)

Affective Crisis and the Possibility of Attachment offers a comparative critical study of contemporary fiction. It intervenes in discussions about contemporary fiction in its literary-historical relationship to postmodernism and in its socio-historical relationship to neoliberalism. It argues that contemporary literature is dominated by affective questions that are rooted in, but not fully subsumed by, neoliberalism: ‘How can I experience reality (as real)?’; ‘How can I feel attached to someone?’ This ‘affective dominant’ signals a diachronical shift from postmodernist fiction’s pervasive epistemological and ontological reflections to a focus on questions of an affective nature in contemporary fiction. It also offers a perspective on contemporary fiction as mediating neoliberalism’s double-edged dynamics of commodifying affective experience while privatising collective experience.

The book argues that contemporary fiction develops emergent mediations of neoliberal dynamics, with the affective crises the latter yield. It studies this affective crisis in relation to central themes as identity and climate crisis, and through prevalent contemporary genres as autofiction and coming-of-age narratives. The book explores a transnational corpus, including authors Heike Geissler, Ben Lerner, Édouard Louis, Valeria Luiselli, Ling Ma, Lieke Marsman, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Niña Weijers and Alejandro Zambra, amongst others.

Randall L. Schweller, Broken Cycle: World Politics in the Age of Dissent – Cambridge University Press, February 2026

Why is the Liberal International Order unraveling – and will this lead to global disorder? Broken Cycle explores this urgent question by viewing international politics through a dynamic lens focused on the rise and fall of great powers – whose periodic global wars determine who rules and which ideas and values prevail in the reordered international system. Randall L. Schweller uncovers recurring patterns of change, offering a framework to anticipate the contours of the emerging world. Rather than tracking short-term diplomatic shifts, this book seeks the deeper rhythms of history – cycles of growth, expansion, and decline – that shape international politics over centuries. These patterns are not inevitable, but they are powerful. By understanding them, we gain insight into the forces driving today’s dissent – and tomorrow’s possibilities. This is a study of the structural forces that govern change, the crises that break the old order, and the ideas that rise in its place.

Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney eds. Media Rurality – Duke University Press, April 2026

Patrick Brodie, Wild Tides: Media Infrastructure and Financial Crisis in Ireland – Duke University Press, March 2026

In Wild Tides, Patrick Brodie maps the shifting fortunes of the Irish economy before the 2008 financial crisis up to 2020, outlining how the Irish state moved from rampant and irresponsible financialized development to incentivizing private media infrastructure and policy as instruments for economic recovery. Brodie contends that, while the Irish state’s investment in creative and technological sectors of media was supposed to bring resources back into the country and stabilize the economy, it instead rendered the country even more vulnerable to future instability and transferred wealth into the hands of multinational corporations. Through ethnographic work and close engagement with the Irish state’s policy and planning across a number of key media infrastructure sites, Brodie unfolds the very real environmental and social impacts of Ireland’s naturalized model of financialized, foreign direct investment-led infrastructural development. Richly researched and comprehensively argued, Wild Tides reveals the multifarious, unexpected ways that financialization reaches into the daily life of a nation.

Ana Oancea, Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-Siècle France – University of Toronto Press, July 2025

Dangerous Creations 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 science and technology. The book reveals how Verne, Robida, Zola, and de l’Isle-Adam reimagine the figure of the inventor, reshaping the literary standards of their time. Universally male in these narratives, the inventor serves as a flawed exemplar of national heroism during the Age of Empire – a period marked by significant external threats and internal strife – while also embodying unrestrained creativity. Ultimately, the inventor novel reflects broader French anxieties surrounding scientific progress, empire, and gender. Ana Oancea explores the transmedia and transnational legacy of the fin-de-siècle inventor novel through vignettes that highlight similarly themed narratives in contemporary popular culture. These sections engage with films, television series, graphic narratives, and video games that reinterpret key aspects of the inventor narrative, shedding light on its power structures, racial and gender politics, and colonial aspirations.

New Books discussion with Gina Stamm – thanks to dmf for the link

Robin James, Good Vibes Only: Phenomenology and the Biopolitics of Algorithmic Legitimation – Duke University Press, November 2026

In Good Vibes Only, Robin James argues that the vibes, the mathematical vectors driving modern technologies, have shifted. Considering the forms of governance performed by the algorithms fueling AI, recommender systems, facial recognition, and other contemporary technologies, James vividly illustrates our new biopolitical regime, one in which discourses of legitimacy function in place of norms to draw patriarchal, racial, and capitalist lines around personhood. James innovatively combines continental philosophy, popular music studies, and media studies to show how the math driving modern technologies translates into both political forms of governance and colloquial cultural practices ranging from social media posts to playlist categories to hip hop aesthetics. Qualitative atmospheres and abstractions are undergirded by quantitative orientations, utilized by users and platforms alike. Good Vibes Only breaks down the phenomenology of how these algorithmic “vibes” have shifted the way biopower governs, not with disciplinary or regulatory norms, but with orientations or lineages that it assesses for their capacity to carry patriarchal, racial, capitalist property relations into speculative realities.