Category Archives: Uncategorized

Nicole M. Rizzuto, Arresting Ecologies: Global Literature across Air, Land, and Sea, 1926–2014 – Oxford University Press, June 2026

Nicole M. Rizzuto, Arresting Ecologies: Global Literature across Air, Land, and Sea, 1926–2014 – Oxford University Press, June 2026 Expensive hardback only at the moment It is a truism that the last one hundred years have been defined by the accelerated … Continue reading

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Sonia Lavaert, Democratic Thought from Machiavelli to Spinoza: Freedom, Equality, Multitude – trans. Albert Gootjes, Edinburgh University Press, October 2024, paperback April 2026

Sonia Lavaert, Democratic Thought from Machiavelli to Spinoza: Freedom, Equality, Multitude – trans. Albert Gootjes, Edinburgh University Press, October 2024, paperback April 2026 In the latter half of the seventeenth century, Spinoza effected a reversal in the relationship between philosophy, … Continue reading

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Sandrine Bergès, No Place Like Home: Women Philosophers’ Struggles with Domesticity – Oxford University Press, June 2026

Sandrine Bergès, No Place Like Home: Women Philosophers’ Struggles with Domesticity – Oxford University Press, June 2026 Why should we think about the home? Most would agree that it is central to children’s development-a healthy, stable, and hopefully loving environment … Continue reading

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Pierre Déléage, Inventing Writing: Prophets, Shamans, and the Transmission of Ritual Discourse in North American Indigenous Cultures, 1600–1900 – trans. Victoria Bergstrom and Matthew H. Evans, HAU, March 2026 (print and open access)

Pierre Déléage, Inventing Writing: Prophets, Shamans, and the Transmission of Ritual Discourse in North American Indigenous Cultures, 1600–1900 – trans. Victoria Bergstrom and Matthew H. Evans, HAU, March 2026 Print book distributed by University of Chicago Press, and open access direct … Continue reading

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Bassam Sidiki, Parasitic Empires: Infection, Insularity, Inter-Imperiality, 1880-2022 – The University of North Carolina Press, November 2026

Bassam Sidiki, Parasitic Empires: Infection, Insularity, Inter-Imperiality, 1880-2022 – The University of North Carolina Press, November 2026 No empire is an island  Real and imagined versions of the island and the microbe come together to tell a new story about … Continue reading

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Haig Patapan, The Modern Tyrant: Authoritarian Leadership in Theory and Practice – Edinburgh University Press, March 2026

Haig Patapan, The Modern Tyrant: Authoritarian Leadership in Theory and Practice – Edinburgh University Press, March 2026

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Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 32 – trying to improve a draft

As I said in the last update, I went to the EUI in Florence at the beginning of February with a nearly complete draft of my manuscript on Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France, and had the plan to leave at the … Continue reading

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Emile Benveniste, Fernand Braudel, Georges Dumézil, Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories, Travel, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Julia Kristeva’s portrait of Émile Benveniste in The Samurai

Julia Kristeva’s first novel The Samurai was published in 1990. It’s not the greatest novel, but it’s well known that the book is a thinly disguised autobiography, with the central character Olga Morena modelled on herself. Many of the famous names of … Continue reading

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Christian Henderson, Monarchies of Extraction: The Gulf States in the Global Food System – Cambridge University Press, February 2026 and New Books discussion

Christian Henderson, Monarchies of Extraction: The Gulf States in the Global Food System – Cambridge University Press, February 2026 In a region known for its export of oil, Monarchies of Extraction explores how the Gulf states are simultaneously defined by … Continue reading

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Liv Ingeborg Lied and Brent Nongbri, Working with Manuscripts: A Guide for Textual Scholars – Yale University Press, April 2025

Liv Ingeborg Lied and Brent Nongbri, Working with Manuscripts: A Guide for Textual Scholars – Yale University Press, April 202 A first-of-its-kind handbook outlining best practices and common pitfalls for students and textual scholars interested in beginning to work with manuscripts While manuscripts … Continue reading

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