Tag: 2024
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Carey, Brycchan, The Unnatural Trade: Slavery, Abolition, and Environmental Writing, 1650-1807
Brycchan Carey, The Unnatural Trade: Slavery, Abolition, and Environmental Writing, 1650-1807 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024) 280 pp. $65.00. Hb. IBSN: 978-0300224412 The Unnatural Trade: Slavery, Abolition, and Environmental Writing, 1650-1807 by Brycchan Carey magnifies the cross-section of eighteenth-century British abolitionist writing that sought to un-naturalize slavery in a part of the world that…
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Desmond, Adrian, Reign of the Beast: The Atheist World of W. D. Saull and his Museum of Evolution
Adrian Desmond, Reign of the Beast: The Atheist World of W. D. Saull and his Museum of Evolution (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2024) xii+664 Free e-book. £25.46 Pb. £37.36 Hb. ISBN: 978-1-80511-240-2 In 1851, Admiral Sir John Ross returned to London from the Arctic expedition that had discovered the sad fate of Franklin’s lost expedition.…
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Chi, Chienyn, Madness, Psychiatry, and Empire in Postcolonial Literature
Chienyn Chi, Madness, Psychiatry, and Empire in Postcolonial Literature. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) xvii + 143 pp. £109.99 Hb. £89.99 ebook. ISBN: 978-3-031-59891-3 Chienyn Chi’s work is a bold attempt to decolonize psychiatric and psychoanalytic discourse by revealing how theories of madness are deeply entangled in imperial histories and power…
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Dawson, Gowan, Monkey to Man: The Evolution of the March of Progress Image
Gowan Dawson, Monkey to Man: The Evolution of the March of Progress Image (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024) 392 pp. £30.00 Hb. ISBN 978-0-300-27062-4 Monkey to Man is Gowan Dawson’s study of the 1860-1979 emergence of the ‘March of Progress’ image: the well-worn notion of evolutionary development as an orderly left-to-right ascent. One finding:…
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Speitz, Michelle, The Romantic Sublime and Representations of Technology
Michelle Speitz, The Romantic Sublime and Representations of Technology (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2024) 216 pp. £80 Hb. ISBN: 9781835536704 In The Romantic Sublime and Representations of Technology, Michelle Speitz ‘offers the first full-length study of the sublime stories British Romantic writers told about technology’ (p. 1). This is a welcome and original study, casting…
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Waller-Peterson, Belinda, Womb Work: Healing Narratives as Reparative Praxis in Black Women’s Literature
Belinda Waller-Peterson, Womb Work: Healing Narratives as Reparative Praxis in Black Women’s Literature (South Carolina: Clemson University Press, 2024) 156 pp. $130 Hb. ISBN: 9781638040644 This book is deservedly on the BSLS 2024 Book Prize shortlist. It is impressive in a number of ways and it feels politically urgent. The series it is published in…
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Harrison, Jaime, Digital Culture in Contemporary Fiction
Jaime Harrison, Digital Culture in Contemporary Fiction (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2024), 208 pp. £80 Hb. ISBN:9781802074710 The texts that Jaime Harrison considers in Digital Culture in Contemporary Fiction are part of a broader discussion of contemporary concerns about the way that digital culture, particularly issues of privacy and digital surveillance, can be witnessed in…
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Dimick, Sarah,Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures
Sarah Dimick, Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures (Ohio: Columbia UP, 2024) 328 pp. £30 Pb. ISBN: 9780231209250 Sarah Dimick has coined the term ‘climate arrhythmias’ to describe that feeling the seasons are not working as they should be or as they usually have done in the past (p. 2). These arrhythmias can be experienced…
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Hamann-Rose, Paul, Genetics and the Novel: Reimagining Life Through Fiction
Paul Hamann-Rose, Genetics and the Novel: Reimagining Life Through Fiction, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) 243 pp. £99.00 Hb. £79.99 eBook. ISBN: 9783031531002 In 1953, when James Watson and Francis Crick unveiled the double helix structure of DNA, some marvelled at the molecular blueprint of life, while others speculated…
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Taylor, Stuart J., Mathematics in Postmodern American Fiction
Stuart J. Taylor, Mathematics in Postmodern American Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) ix+308 pp. £109.99 Hb. £89.99 ebook. ISBN: 978-3-031-48670-8 As mathematics appears unreasonably effective in defining and solving problems, we now observe its arresting spread, in real time, into each and every aspect of our life, through its various forms and incarnations – models, data,…
