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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Square One: First-Order

Questions in the Humanities........ 2
Stanford Briefs................................... 3
Criticism and Theory...................4-7
Stanford Text Technologies......7-8
Early Modern Studies........... 9-10
Cultural Memory in
the Present.....................................10-11
18th Century Studies......................12
Romanticism.................................12-13
19th Century Studies................13-14
20th Century Literature...........14
Sensing Media: Aesthetics,
Philosophy, and Cultures
of Media............................................. 15
American Literature.......................... 16 Shakespeare’s Mad Men Critique of Critique
Post*45............................................16-18 A Crisis of Authority Roy Ben-Shai
Cultural Studies...........................18-19 Richard van Oort At a moment when popular
Cover image: David Drummond.
This book is about a mad king discourse is saturated with voices
and a mad duke. With original confronting each other about not
O RDER ING and iconoclastic readings, Richard being critical enough, while academic
Use code S23LIT to receive a 20% van Oort pioneers the reading of discourses proclaim to have moved
discount on all ISBNs listed in this Shakespeare as an ethical thinker of past critique, this provocative
catalog, now through 9/1/23. the “originary scene,” the scene in book reawakens the foundational
Visit sup.org to order online. Visit which humans became conscious question of what “critique” is in
sup.org/help/orderingbyphone/ of themselves as symbol-using the first place. Ben-Shai inspects
for information on phone moral and narrative beings. Taking critique as an orientation of critical
orders. Books not yet published King Lear and Measure for Measure thinking, probing its structures and
or temporarily out of stock will be as case studies, van Oort shows assumptions, its limits and its risks, its
charged to your credit card when
they become available and are in
how the minimal concept of an history and its possibilities. The book
the process of being shipped. anthropological scene of origin—the is a journey through a landscape of
“originary hypothesis”—provides ideas, images, and texts from diverse
@stanfordpress the basis for a new understanding of sources—theological, psychological,
every aspect of the plays, from the etymological, and artistic, but mainly
facebook.com/ psychology of the characters to the across the history of philosophy, from
stanforduniversitypress Plato and Saint Augustine, through
ethical and dialogical conflicts upon
Stanfordupress which the drama is based. The result Kant and Hegel, Marx and Heidegger,
is a gripping commentary on the up to contemporary critical theory.
Blog: stanfordpress. plays that makes Shakespeare feel Along the way, the reader is invited
typepad.com new again. to examine their own orientation of
thought; to question popular dis-
“This is criticism of the highest order.” course; and to revisit the philosophi-
EXAMINATION COPY POLICY —Blair Hoxby, cal canon, setting the groundwork
Examination copies of select titles Stanford University
are available on sup.org.
for an examination of alternative
SQUARE ONE: FIRST-ORDER orientations of critical thinking.
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are interested in and click Request
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2 SQUARE ONE: FIRST-ORDER QUESTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES

How to Live at the End The Future of Decline The Socialist Patriot
of the World Anglo-American Culture at George Orwell and War
Theory, Art, and Politics for Its Limits Peter Stansky
the Anthropocene Jed Esty In this study, Stanford historian
Travis Holloway AS THE US BECOMES A SECOND-PLACE and lifelong Orwell scholar Peter
ASSESSING THE DAWN OF THE
NATION, CAN IT SHED THE SUPERPOWER Stansky incisively demonstrates how
NOSTALGIA THAT STILL HAUNTS THE UK?
ANTHROPOCENE ERA, A POET AND Orwell’s body of work was defined
PHILOSOPHER ASKS: HOW DO WE LIVE
AT THE END OF THE WORLD?
Drawing on the example of by the four major conflicts that
post-WWII Britain and looking punctuated his life: World War I, the
The irony of the Anthropocene ahead at 2020s America, Jed Esty Spanish Civil War, World War II,
era is that, in a neoliberal culture suggests that becoming a second- and the Cold War.
of the self, it is forcing us to place nation is neither disastrous,
consider ourselves as a collective By carefully combing through Or-
as alarmists claim, nor avoidable,
again. How to Live at the End of well’s published works, notably “My
as optimists insist. Contemporary
the World is a hopeful exploration Country Right or Left,” The Lion and
declinism often masks white
of how we might inherit the name the Unicorn, Animal Farm, and his
nostalgia and perpetuates a
“Anthropocene,” renarrate it, and most dystopian and prescient novel,
conservative longing for Cold War
revise our way of life or thought in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Stansky teases
certainty. But the narcissistic lure of
view of it. In his book on time, art, apart Orwell’s often paradoxical
“lost greatness” appeals across the
and politics in an era of escalating views on patriotism and socialism.
political spectrum. As Esty argues,
climate change, Holloway takes The Socialist Patriot is ultimately an
it resonates so widely in mainstream
up difficult, unanswered questions attempt to reconcile the apparent
media because Americans have
in recent work by Donna Haraway, contradictions between Orwell’s
lost access to a language of national
Kathryn Yusoff, Bruno Latour, commitment to socialist ideals and
purpose beyond global supremacy. It
Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Isabelle his sharp critique of totalitarianism
is time to shelve the shopworn fables
Stengers, sketching a path toward by demonstrating the centrality of
of endless US dominance, to face
a radical form of democracy—a his wartime experiences, giving
the multipolar world of the future,
zoocracy, or, a rule of all of the living. twenty-first century readers greater
and to tell new American stories.
insight into the inner world of one
The Future of Decline is a guide to
“Beautifully written and of our time.” of the most influential writers of the
finding them.
—Peg Birmingham, modern age.
editor of Philosophy Today
“Esty’s book is a wise and even
STANFORD BRIEFS beautiful one.” “Stansky triumphs magnificently again.”
138 pages, May 2022 —Benjamin Kunkel,
author of Utopia or Bust —John Rodden,
9781503633339 Paper $14.00  $11.20 sale author of Becoming George Orwell
STANFORD BRIEFS
STANFORD BRIEFS
164 pages, May 2022
150 pages, January 2023
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STANFORD BRIEFS 3
 Moments of Capital Religion The Paranoid Chronotope
World Theory, World Literature Rereading What Is Bound Together Power, Truth, Identity
Eli Jelly-Schapiro Michel Serres Frida Beckman
Moments of Capital sets out to Translated by Malcolm DeBevoise This book identifies and illuminates
grasp the unity and heterogeneity With this profound final work, paranoia as a significant feature
of global capital in the postcolonial completed in the days leading up to of contemporary U.S. society and
present. Jelly-Schapiro argues that his death, Michel Serres presents a culture. Centering on three key
global capital is composed of three vivid picture of his thinking about dimensions—power, truth, and
synchronous moments: primitive religion. Themes from Serres’s earlier identity—in three different contexts
accumulation, expanded reproduc- writings—energy and information, —society, literature, and critique—
tion, and the “synthetic disposses- the role of the media in modern the book explores the increasing
sion” facilitated by financialization society, the anthropological function influence of paranoid thinking in
and privatization. These moments of sacrifice, the role of scientific U.S. society during the second half
correspond to distinct economic knowledge, the problem of evil— of the twentieth century and first
and political forms, and distinct are reinterpreted here in the light decades of the twenty-first, a period
strands of theory and fiction. of the Old Testament accounts of which has seen the rise of control
Isaac and Jonah and a variety of systems and neoliberal ascendency.
The book’s literary readings make
Gospel episodes. Monotheistic Inquiring about the predominance
vivid the uneven texture and experi-
religion, Serres argues, resembles of white, male, American subjects in
ence of capitalist modernity at large.
mathematical abstraction in its paranoid culture, Beckman recognizes
Analyzing formally and thematically
dazzling power to bring together an antagonistic maintenance and
diverse novels, Jelly-Schapiro evinces
the real and the virtual, the natural fortification of a conception of the
the different patterns of conscious-
and the transcendent; but only in its autonomous individual that perceives
ness that register and hypothesize
Christian embodiment is it capable itself as under threat. Identifying
a way beyond the contradictions of
of binding together human beings in such paranoia as emerging from
capital. This book develops a new
such a way that partisan attachments an increasingly disjunctive relation
conceptual key for the mapping of
are dissolved and a new era of between this conception of the subject
contemporary theory, world litera-
history, free for once of the lethal and the changing nature of the public
ture, and global capital itself.
repetition of collective violence, can sphere, she develops the concept of
“A formidable achievement.” be entered into. the paranoid chronotope as a tool for
—Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, theoretical analysis of social, literary,
Oxford University “A stunning book.” and critical practices today.
—Jean-Pierre Dupuy,
CURRENCIES: NEW THINKING FOR Stanford University
FINANCIAL TIMES “Impressively incisive.”
216 pages, April 2022 —Timothy Melley,
266 pages, March 2023 Miami University
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256 pages, May 2022
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4 CRITICISM AND THEORY

The Critique of Nonviolence Overlooking Damage What Pornography Knows
Martin Luther King, Jr., Art, Display, and Loss in Times Sex and Social Protest since the
and Philosophy of Crisis Eighteenth Century
Mark Christian Thompson Jonah Siegel Kathleen Lubey
How does Martin Luther King, Jr., Siegel makes the daring argument Lubey offers a new history of
understand race philosophically and that a thoughtful reaction to pornography based on forgotten
how did this understanding lead him images of damage need not stop bawdy fiction of the eighteenth
to develop an ontological conception at melancholy, but can lead us to a century, its nineteenth-century
of racist police violence? Tracking new reckoning. Would the objects republication, and its appearance in
the presence of twentieth-century we admire be more beautiful if they 1960s paperbacks. Through close
German philosophy and theology in were not injured or displaced, if they textual study, Lubey shows how
his thought, the book situates King’s did not remind us of unbearable these texts were edited across time to
ontology conceptually and socially violence? Siegel takes up writers from become what we think pornography
in nonviolent protest. In so doing, the time of the French Revolution is—a genre focused primarily
The Critique of Nonviolence reads to today who have reacted to the on sex. Originally, they were far
King’s “Letter from a Birmingham depredations of revolutionary more variable, joining speculative
Jail” (1963) with Walter Benjamin’s iconoclasm, imperial looting, and philosophy and feminist theory to
“Critique of Violence” (1921) to industrial capitalism, and proposes sexual description. Lubey’s readings
reveal the depth of King’s political- that in these authors we may find show that pornography always
theological critique of police violence resources with which to navigate had a social consciousness—that it
as the illegitimate appropriation our contemporary situation. Deftly knew, long before anti-pornography
of the racialized state of exception. bringing the methods of literary feminists said it, that women and
As Thompson argues, it is in part studies to bear on debates in the study nonbinary people are disadvantaged
through its appropriation of German of heritage, archaeology, and visual by a society that grants sexual
philosophy and theology that King’s culture, Overlooking Damage reflects privilege to men. Rather than glorify
ontology condemns the perpetual on the ways in which concepts of this inequity, Lubey argues, the
American state of racial exception beauty intersect with periods of genre’s central task has historically
that permits unlimited police epochal violence. been to expose its artifice and
violence against Black lives. envision social reform.
“Dazzling and dizzying.”
“Essential for students of King, —Elaine Scarry, “Nothing short of astonishing.”
Black Power, and twentieth-century Harvard University —Frances Ferguson,
Africana and European philosophy.” University of Chicago
336 pages, July 2022
—Paul C. Taylor, 312 pages, September 2022
Vanderbilt University
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9781503633117 Paper $28.00  $22.40 sale
232 pages, June 2022
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CRITICISM AND THEORY 5

 Criticism and Politics Climate Change, Interrupted Martial Aesthetics
A Polemical Introduction Representation and the Remaking How War Became an Art Form
Bruce Robbins of Time Anders Engberg-Pedersen
AN ACCESSIBLE INTRODUCTION TO Barbara Leckie The twenty-first century has
CULTURAL THEORY AND AN ORIGINAL
POLEMIC ABOUT THE PURPOSE Spanning the long nineteenth witnessed a pervasive militarization
OF CRITICISM. century through our current of aesthetics with Western military
moment, Leckie’s interdisciplinary institutions co-opting the creative
What is criticism for? Re-examining
treatment of climate change at worldmaking of art and merging
theorists from Matthew Arnold to
once rethinks time and illustrates it with the destructive forces of
Walter Benjamin, to Fredric Jame-
that the time for climate action is warfare. Martial Aesthetics examines
son, Stuart Hall, and Hortense
now. Climate Change, Interrupted the origins of this unlikely merger,
Spillers, Criticism and Politics
argues that linear, progress- showing that today’s creative warfare
explores the animating contradictions
inflected temporalities are not is merely the extension of a historical
that have long propelled literary
adequate to a crisis that defies development that began long ago.
studies: between pronouncing
their terms. Instead, this book Indeed, the emergence of martial
judgment and engaging in
advances a theory and practice of aesthetics harkens back to a series
philosophical critique, between
interruption to rethink prevailing of inventions, ideas, and debates in
democracy and expertise, between
temporal frameworks. At the same the eighteenth and early nineteenth
political commitment and aesthetic
time, it models the anachronistic, century. Engberg-Pedersen shows
autonomy. Both a leftist critic and a
time-blending, and time-layering how military discourses and
critic of the left, Robbins unflinch-
temporality it advances. In a early war media such as star charts,
ingly defends criticism from those
series of experimental chapters horoscopes, and the Prussian
who might wish to de-politicize it,
informed by the unlikely trio wargame were entangled with ideas
arguing that working for change is
of Walter Benjamin, Donna of creativity, genius, and possible
not optional for critics, but rather a
Haraway, and Virginia Woolf, worlds in philosophy and aesthetic
core part of their job description.
Leckie reinflects and cowrites the theory (by thinkers such as Leibniz,
“Urgent, bracing, and traditions and knowledges of the Baumgarten, Kant, and Schiller)
powerfully argued.” long nineteenth century and in order to trace the emergence of
—Caroline Levine, the current period in the spirit of martial aesthetics.
Cornell University climate action collaboration.
“A bold, ambitious, and
272 pages, September 2022 “A moving and voracious experiment expansive book.”
9781503633209 Paper $24.00  $19.20 sale
that inspires more than it alarms.” —Thomas Stubblefield,
—Maggie Nelson, author of Drone Art
author of On Freedom: Four Songs
of Care and Constraint 216 pages, March 2023
9780804799942 Paper $25.00  $20.00 sale
274 pages, November 2022
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6 CRITICISM AND THEORY

Sociability and Society The Philosophical Pathos of Utopia in the Age of Survival
Literature and the Symposium Susan Taubes Between Myth and Politics
K. Ludwig Pfeiffer Between Nihilism and Hope S. D. Chrostowska
From medieval troubadours to Elliot R. Wolfson Vigilant and timely, Chrostowska
Parisian salons and beyond, Pfeiffer Drawing on close readings of Susan issues an urgent report on the
conceptualizes the symposium as Taubes’s writings, Wolfson plumbs vitality of utopia, making the case
an institution of sociability with a the depths of the tragic sensibility that critical social theory needs to
central societal function. As such that shaped her worldview, hover- reinstate utopia as a speculative
he reinforces a programmatic ing between the poles of nihilism myth. At the same time, the left must
theoretical move in the sociology and hope. Specifically, Wolfson reassume utopia as an action-guiding
of Georg Simmel and builds on illumines how she presciently hypothesis. Chrostowska looks to
theories of social interaction and explored the hypernomian status the vibrant, visionary mid-century
communication characterized of Jewish ritual and belief after the resurgence of embodied utopian
by Max Weber, George Herbert Holocaust; the theopolitical chal- longings and projections in Surreal-
Mead, Jürgen Habermas, Niklas lenges of Zionism and the dangers of ism, the Situationist International,
Luhmann, and others. To make his ethnonationalism; the antitheological and critical theorists writing in their
argument, Pfeiffer draws on the theology and gnostic repercussions of wake, reconstructing utopia’s link to
work of a range of writers, including Heideggerian thought; the mystical survival through to the earliest, most
Dr. Samuel Johnson and Diderot, atheism and apophaticism of tragedy radical phase of the French environ-
Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust, in Simone Weil; and her understand- mental movement. Survival emerges
Dorothy Sayers, Joseph Conrad, and ing of poetry. Wolfson delves into as the organizing concept for a
Stieg Larsson. Ultimately, Pfeiffer the abyss that molded Susan Taubes’s variety of democratic political forms
concludes that if modern societies mytheological thinking, making that center the corporeality of desire
do not find ways of reinstating a powerful case for the continued in social movements contesting the
elements of the Athenian sympo- relevance of her work to the study of expanding management of life by
sium, especially those relating to its philosophy and religion today. state institutions across the globe.
ritualized ease, decency and style
of interaction, they will have to “Wolfson writes with a poetic “An elegant and bold ode to utopian
lucidity—and a passion—worthy of thinking in the shadow of climate
cope with increasing violence and change and pandemics.”
decreasing social cohesion. his subject.” —Vivian Liska,
University of Antwerp —Banu Bargu,
author of Starve and Immolate
“Important and thought-provoking.”
STANFORD STUDIES IN
—Peter Gilgen, 232 pages, October 2021
JEWISH MYSTICISM
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CRITICISM AND THEORY STANFORD TEXT 7

TECHNOLOGIES
 Holy Digital Grail Literary Mathematics Digital Codicology
A Medieval Book on the Internet Quantitative Theory for Medieval Books and Modern Labor
Michelle R. Warren Textual Studies Bridget Whearty
Warren tells the story of an Arthurian Michael Gavin Medieval manuscripts are our shared
romance with textual origins in Across the humanities and social inheritance, and today they are
twelfth century England now dif- sciences, scholars increasingly use more accessible than ever—thanks
fused across the twenty-first century quantitative methods to study textual to digital copies online. Yet for all
internet. In the process, she uncovers data. In Literary Mathematics, Mi- that widespread digitization has
a practice of “tech medievalism” chael Gavin grapples with this devel- fundamentally transformed how we
that weaves through the history of opment, describing how quantitative connect with the medieval past, we
computing since the mid-twentieth methods for the study of textual data understand very little about what
century; metaphors indebted to offer powerful tools for historical these digital objects really are. We
King Arthur and the Holy Grail are inquiry and sometimes unexpected rarely consider how they are made
integral to some of the technologies perspectives on theoretical issues of or who makes them. This case
that now sustain medieval books concern to literary studies. study–rich book demystifies digitiza-
on the internet. This infrastructural tion, revealing what it’s like to remake
Student-friendly and accessible,
approach to book history illuminates medieval books online and connect-
the book advances this argument
how the meaning of literature is ing modern digital manuscripts to
through case studies drawn from
made by many people besides ca- their much longer media history,
the Early English Books Online
nonical authors: translators, scribes, from print, to photography, to the
corpus. Across these case studies,
patrons, readers, collectors, librarians, rise of the internet.
Gavin challenges readers to consider
cataloguers, editors, photographers,
why corpus-based methods work Ultimately, this book argues that cen-
software programmers, and more.
so effectively and asks whether the tering the modern labor and laborers
Situated at the intersections of digital
successes of formal modeling ought at the heart of digital cultural heritage
humanities, library sciences, literary
to inspire humanists to reconsider fosters a more just and more rigorous
history, and book history, Holy Digital
fundamental theoretical assumptions future for medieval, manuscript, and
Grail offers new ways to conceptual-
about textuality and meaning. media studies.
ize authorship, canon formation, and
the definition of a “book.” “The most ambitious, and practical, “Deeply insightful and
book I know on the computational fiercely generous.”
“Warren is among the most original, revolution in literary studies.” —Matthew Fisher,
creative, and technologically alert —Jonathan Hope, University of California, Los Angeles
medieval scholars of our time.” Arizona State University
STANFORD TEXT TECHNOLOGIES
—Paul Strohm, 338 pages, November 2022
Columbia University STANFORD TEXT TECHNOLOGIES
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8 STANFORD TEXT TECHNOLOGIES

Projecting Spirits The Unknowable in Early The Paradoxes of
Speculation, Providence, and Early Modern Thought Ignorance in Early Modern
Modern Optical Media Natural Philosophy and the Poetics England and France
Pasi Väliaho of the Ineffable Sandrine Parageau
The history of projected images at Kevin Killeen
With close textual analysis of hitherto
the turn of the seventeenth century Ranging from Paradise Lost to neglected sources and a reassessment
reveals a changing perception of thinkers in and around the Royal of canonical philosophical works by
chance and order, contingency and Society and commentary on the Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, Locke,
form. Pasi Väliaho maps how the Book of Job, Killeen explores how and others, Parageau examines the
leading optical media of the period— the era of the scientific revolution role of ignorance in the production of
the camera obscura and the magic was in part paralyzed by and in part knowledge, identifying three com-
lantern—developed in response to, energized by the paradox it encoun- mon virtues of ignorance as a mode
and framed, the era’s key intellectual tered in thinking about the elusive of wisdom, a principle of knowledge,
dilemma of whether the world fell nature of God and the unfathomable and an epistemological instrument,
under God’s providential care, or nature of the natural world. Looking in philosophical and theological
was subject to chance and open at writers with scientific, literary works. How could an essentially
to speculating. As Väliaho shows, and theological interests, from the negative notion be turned into some-
camera obscuras and magic lanterns shoemaker mystic Jacob Boehme thing profitable and even desirable?
were variously employed to give the to John Milton, from Robert Boyle Taken in the context of Renaissance
world an intelligible and manage- to Margaret Cavendish, and from humanism, the Reformation and the
able design. Drawing on a range of Thomas Browne to the fiery prophet “Scientific Revolution”—which all
materials—philosophical, scientific Anna Trapnel, the book shows called for a redefinition and reaf-
and religious literature, visual arts, how seventeenth-century writings firmation of knowledge—ignorance,
correspondence, poems, pamphlets, redeployed the rich resources of the Parageau finds, was not dismissed in
and illustrations—this provocative ineffable and the apophatic—what the early modern quest for renewed
and inventive work expands our cannot be said, except in negative ways of thinking and knowing. On
concept of the early media of projec- terms—to think about natural the contrary, it was assimilated into
tion, revealing how they spoke to philosophy and the enigmas of the the philosophical and scientific
early modern thinkers, and shaped a natural world. discourses of the time.
new, speculative concept of the world.
“Brims with smart scholarship, sharp “Parageau has assembled a rich set of
“[A] commanding, erudite history.” writing, and surprising discoveries.” texts, and she reads them with care
—Tom Conley, —Jess Keiser, and nuance.”
Harvard University Tufts University —Paula Findlen,
Stanford University
272 pages, June 2022 272 pages, June 2023
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EARLY MODERN STUDIES 9

 Reading John Milton Figures of Possibility Love against Substitution
How to Persist in Troubled Times Aesthetic Experience, Mysticism, Seventeenth-Century English
Stephen B. Dobranski and the Play of the Senses Literature and the Meaning
A CAPTIVATING BIOGRAPHY Niklaus Largier of Marriage
THAT CELEBRATES THE AUDACIOUS,
Arguing for a new understanding of Eric B. Song
INSPIRING LIFE AND WORKS OF
JOHN MILTON, REVEALING HOW mystical experience, Largier fore- The literary project of testing the
HE SPEAKS TO OUR TIMES.
grounds the ways in which devotion meaning of marriage proved to
John Milton is unrivalled—for builds on experimental practices of be urgent work throughout the
the music of his verse and the figuration in order to shape percep- seventeenth century. Starting at
breadth of his learning. In a time tion, emotions, and thoughts anew. the end of the sixteenth century
of convulsive political turmoil, Specifically, Largier illuminates how with Edmund Spenser, and then
he justified the killing of a king, devotional practices are invested in exploring works by William
pioneered free speech, and publicly the creation of possibilities, and this Shakespeare, William Davenant,
defended divorce. He was, in short, investment has been a key element John Milton, Lucy Hutchinson, and
an iconoclast. Afflicted by blindness, in a wide range of experimental Aphra Behn, Eric Song offers a new
illness, and political imprisonment, engagements in literature and art account of how notions of unique
he also understood adversity. In from the seventeenth to the twen- personhood became embedded
this brisk, topical, and engaging tieth century, and most recently in in a literary way of thinking and
biography, Stephen B. Dobranski forms of “new materialism.” Read as feeling about marriage. The writings
brushes the scholarly dust from a history of the senses and emotions, studied in this book elevate a love
the portrait of the artist to reveal the book argues that mystical and between two individuals who deem
Milton’s essential humanity and his devotional practices have long been each other to be unique to the point
unwavering commitment to ideals— invested in the modulating and of being irreplaceable, and this
freedom of religion and the right and reconfiguring of sensation, affects, vocabulary allows writers to put
responsibility of all persons to think and thoughts. Read as a book about affective pressure on the meaning of
for themselves—that are still relevant practices of figuration, it questions marriage as Pauline theology defines
and necessary in our times. ordinary protocols of interpretation it. Stubbornly individual, love
in the humanities, and the priority threatens to short-circuit marriage’s
“Marvelous. Puts to rest the notion given to a hermeneutic understand- function in directing intimate
that Milton is just for academics.” ing of texts and cultural artifacts. feelings toward a communal
—Publishers Weekly
experience of Christ’s love.
328 pages, September 2022 “A singular achievement.”
9781503632707 Cloth $35.00  $28.00 sale —Eric Santner, “Beautifully written and a joy to read.”
University of Chicago —Will Stockton,
Clemson University
CULTURAL MEMORY IN THE PRESENT
320 pages, March 2022 CULTURAL MEMORY IN THE PRESENT
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10 EARLY MODERN STUDIES CULTURAL MEMORY IN THE PRESENT

Badiou by Badiou The Afterlife of Moses Engaging Violence
Alain Badiou, Exile, Democracy, Renewal Civility and the Reach of Literature
Translated by Bruno Bosteels Michael P. Steinberg David Simpson
In this brief, conversational book, In this elegant and personal new While it is widely acknowledged that
the French philosopher Alain work, Steinberg reflects on the civility works against violence, and
Badiou provides readers with a story of Moses and the Exodus as a that literature generates or accompa-
unique introduction to his system foundational myth of politics—of nies civility and engenders tolerance,
of thought, summed up in the the formation not of a nation but of civility has also been understood as
trilogy of Being and Event, Logics a political community grounded in violence in disguise, and literature,
of Worlds, and The Immanence universal law. Motivated in part by which has only rarely sought to claim
of Truths. Taking the form of an recent reactionary insurgencies in the power of violence, has often been
interview and two talks and keeping the US, Europe, and Israel, this astute accused of inciting it. This book sets
in mind a broad audience, the book work of intellectual history posits the out to describe the ways in which
touches upon all the major concepts critique of myths of origin as a key these words—violence, literature and
of Badiou’s philosophy and illus- principle of democratic government, civility—and the concepts they evoke
trates them with fitting examples. A affect, and citizenship, of their are mutually entangled, and the uses
veritable tour de force of pedagogi- endurance as well as their fragility. to which these entanglements have
cal clarity, this is perhaps the single been put.
“A tour de force.”
best general introduction to the —Omri Boehm, Simpson’s argument follows a
The New School for Social Research
work of this prolific and committed broadly historical trajectory from
thinker. If, for Badiou, the task of CULTURAL MEMORY IN THE PRESENT the Renaissance to the present,
philosophy consists in thinking 240 pages, July 2022 drawing on the work of historians,
through the truths of our time, the 9781503632295 Paper $28.00  $22.40 sale
political scientists, literary scholars
texts collected in this small volume and philosophers. The result is a
could not be timelier. distinctly new argument about the
“Captures the latest developments complex entanglements between
in Badiou’s thought, while providing literature, civility, and violence in the
an excellent introduction for anglophone Atlantic sphere.
new readers.”
—Héctor Hoyos, “Among the most important
author of Things with a History literary historical considerations of
violence and civility to emerge in
CULTURAL MEMORY IN THE PRESENT
96 pages, May 2022 recent decades.”
—Judith Butler,
9781503631762 Paper $16.00  $12.80 sale University of California, Berkeley

CULTURAL MEMORY IN THE PRESENT

304 pages, September 2022
9781503633087 Paper $28.00  $22.40 sale

CULTURAL MEMORY IN THE PRESENT 11

 Literary Authority Poetic Form and Thought’s Wilderness
An Eighteenth-Century Genealogy Romantic Provocation Romanticism and the
Claude Willan Carmen Faye Mathes Apprehension of Nature
This book is the cultural history of an Greg Ellermann
The question of what aesthetic
idea which now seems so self-evident experience can “do” grates against Ellermann undertakes a fundamental
as barely to be worth stating: through the fact that much Romantic rethinking of the aesthetics and
writing imaginative literature, an writing represents subjects as not politics of nature, contending that
author can accrue significant and actually in charge of the feelings the romantics tried to circumvent
lasting economic and cultural they feel, the dreams they dream, or the domination of nature that is
power. We take for granted, now, that the actions they take. In response to essential to modern capitalism. As
authority dwells in literature and in this dilemma, Mathes argues that he shows writers of the period such
being its author. This state of affairs being moved contrary to one’s will as Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel,
was not naturally occurring, but is itself an aesthetic phenomenon Mary Wollstonecraft, William
deliberately invented. This book tells explored by Romantic poets, and Wordsworth, and Percy Shelley
the story of that invention, taking shows the provocations that disturb were attuned to nature’s ephem-
Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson and disrupt, invite and compel. eral, ungraspable forms. Further, he
as central figures. Examining the formal tactics of explains how nature’s vanishing—its
Charlotte Smith, William Word- vulnerability and its flight from
Willan challenges the continued
sworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, apprehension—became a philosophi-
reign of the “Scriblerian” model
John Keats, and Percy Bysshe cal and political problem. By trying
of the period and shows how that
Shelley, alongside their reactions to to imagine what ultimately eludes
reign was engineered. In so doing he
historical events such as Toussaint capture, the romantics recognized
historicizes the relationship between
Louverture’s revolt, Mathes reveals the complicity between conceptual
“good” and “bad” writing, and
that an aesthetics of radical open- and economic domination, and they
suggests how we might think about
ness is central to the development saw how thought itself could become
literature and beauty had Pope and
of literary theory and criticism in a technology for control. This insight,
Johnson not taken literary authority
Romantic Britain. Ellermann proposes, motivated
for themselves.
romantic efforts to think past capital-
“An authoritative rethinking of the “Elegant, sharply argued, ist instrumentality and its devastation
making of modern literary authority and engaging. of the world.
in the eighteenth century.” —Jacques Khalip,
—Joseph Roach, Brown University “A vital, eloquent, and necessary book.”
Yale University —Jonathan Sachs,
264 pages, June 2022
Concordia University
304 pages, March 2023 9781503630246 Cloth $60.00  $48.00 sale
9781503630864 Cloth $80.00  $64.00 sale 200 pages, September 2022
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12 18TH CENTURY STUDIES ROMANTICISM

The Romantic Rhetoric Against the Uprooted Word Feminine Singularity
of Accumulation Giving Language Time in The Politics of Subjectivity in
Lenora Hanson Transatlantic Romanticism Nineteenth-Century Literature
Tristram Wolff Ronjaunee Chatterjee
Hanson argues that rhetorical
language records histories of dispos- Wolff argues that well-known writers Feminine Singularity offers a powerful
session and the racialized, gendered including Phillis Wheatley Peters, feminist theory of the subject—and
distribution of the labor of William Blake, William Wordsworth, shows us paths to thinking subjectiv-
subsistence. Examining work by S.T. and Henry David Thoreau offer a ity, race, and gender anew in literature
Coleridge, Edmund Burke, Mary radical chronopolitics in reaction to and in our wider social world.
Robinson, William Wordsworth, the “uprooted word,” or the formal
Through fresh, sophisticated
Benjamin Moseley, Joseph Priestley, analytic used to classify languages
readings of Lewis Carroll, Christina
and Alexander von Humboldt. Han- in progressive time according to a
Rossetti, Charles Baudelaire, and
son reads riots through apostrophe, primitivist timeline of history and
Wilkie Collins in conversation with
enclosure through anachronism, a hierarchy of civilization. Before
psychoanalysis, Black feminist and
superstition and witchcraft through the bad naturalisms of nineteenth-
queer-of-color theory, and continen-
tautology, and the paradoxical century race science could harden
tal philosophy, Chatterjee uncovers
coincidence of subsistence living language into place as a metric of
a lexicon of feminine singularity
with industrialization. The result is to social difference, writers tried to
that manifests across poetry and
show the figural to be a material re- soften, thicken, deepen, and dissolve
prose through likeness and minimal
cord of the survival of non-capitalist it. This naturalizing tendency made
difference, rather than individuality
forms of life within capitalism. But language more difficult to uproot
and identity. Reading for singular-
this survival is not always-already from its active formation in the lives
ity shows us the ways femininity is
resistant to capitalism, nor are the of its speakers. And its “gray romanti-
fundamentally entangled with racial
origins of capital accumulation cism” simultaneously gave language
difference in the nineteenth century
confined to the Romantic past. different kinds of time—most
and well into the contemporary, as
Hanson reveals rhetorical figure as strikingly, the deep time of geologic
well as how rigid categories can be
entwined in deeply ambivalent ways form—to forestall the hardening of
unsettled and upended.
with the circuitous, ongoing process time into progress.
of dispossession. “A compelling and exhilaratingly
“A splendid piece of scholarship.” learned call to think fearlessly.”
“A work of massive and —William Galperin,
Rutgers University —Elaine Freedgood,
singular importance.” New York University
—Fred Moten, 338 pages, October 2022 224 pages, August 2022
New York University 9781503632769 Cloth $70.00  $56.00 sale 9781503630802 Cloth $60.00  $48.00 sale
302 pages, November 2022
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ROMANTICISM 19TH CENTURY STUDIES 13

 Refiguring Speech Victorian Contingencies Auden and the Muse
Late Victorian Fictions of Empire Experiments in Literature, of History
and the Poetics of Talk Science, and Play Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb
Amy R. Wong Tina Young Choi
Concentrating on W. H. Auden’s
In this book, Wong unravels the Contingency is not just a feature work from the late 1930s, when
colonial and racial logic behind of modern politics, finance, and he seeks to understand the poet’s
seemingly innocuous assumptions culture—by thinking contingently, responsibility in the face of a tri-
about “speech”: that our words nineteenth-century Britons rewrote umphant fascism, to the late 1950s,
belong to us, and that self- familiar narratives and upended when he discerns an irreconcilable
possession is a virtue. Through forgone conclusions. Victorian “divorce” between poetry and
readings of late-Victorian fictions of Contingencies shows how scientists, history in light of industrialized
empire, Wong revisits the scene of novelists, and consumers engaged murder, this new study reveals the
speech’s ideological foreclosures as in new formal and material intensity of the poet’s struggles with
articulated in postcolonial theory. experiments with cause and effect, the meanings of history. Through
Engaging Afro-Caribbean thinkers past and present, that actively meticulous readings and significant
like Édouard Glissant and Sylvia undermined routine certainties. archival findings, Susannah Young-
Wynter and analyzing novels by Examining the reinvented geological ah Gottlieb presents a new image
Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram and natural histories of Charles Lyell and understanding of Auden’s
Stoker, George Meredith, Joseph and Charles Darwin, Charles Bab- achievement and reveals how his
Conrad, and Ford Madox Ford, bage’s designs for a machine capable version of modernism illuminates
Refiguring Speech reroutes attention of responding to a contingent future, urgent contemporary issues and
away from speech and toward an and novelists George Eliot and theoretical paradigms: from the
anticolonial poetics of talk, which Lewis Carroll alongside physicist meaning of marriage equality to the
emphasizes communal ownership James Clerk Maxwell, Choi traces persistence of fascism; from critical
and embeddedness within the social contingency across materials and theory to psychoanalysis; from
world and material environment. media. And she explores the popular precarity to postcolonial studies.
board games and pre-cinematic
“Illuminating and eloquent.” visual entertainments that encour- “Gottlieb reveals her own integrity
—Tanya Agathocleous, as an impeccable scholarly reader
Hunter College
aged Victorians to navigate a world
made newly uncertain. with a fine understanding of the give
224 pages, July 2023 and take, the ebb and flow, of the
9781503635173 Cloth $70.00  $56.00 sale “Smart, surprising and compelling.” performance of poetic justice.”
—Barri J. Gold, —Homi K. Bhabha,
Muhlenberg College Harvard University

264 pages, November 2021 312 pages, December 2022

9781503629288 Cloth $65.00  $52.00 sale 9781503633926 Paper $30.00  $24.00 sale

14 19TH CENTURY STUDIES 20TH CENTURY LITERATURE

My Life as an Artificial Communicology Malicious Deceivers
Creative Intelligence Mutations in Human Relations? Thinking Machines and
Mark Amerika Vilém Flusser Performative Objects
Edited by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes Ioana B. Jucan
Is it possible that creative artists
Foreword by N. Katherine Hayles Jucan traces a genealogy of post-truth
have more in common with
machines than we might think? Communicology is Vilém Flusser’s intimately tied to globalizing moder-
Employing an improvisational call- first thesis on his concepts of techni- nity and connects the production of
and-response writing performance cal images and technical imagination. repeatable fakeness with capitalism
co-authored with an AI text genera- In this foundational text he lays the and Cartesian metaphysics. Through
tor, Amerika interrogates how his groundwork for later work, offering a case studies, the book unpacks the
own “psychic automatism” is itself philosophical approach to communi- notion of fakeness through the related
a nonhuman function strategically cation as a phenomenon that perme- logics of dissimulation (deception)
designed to reveal the poetic attri- ates every aspect of human existence. and simulation (performativity) as
butes of programmable worlds still Clearly organized around questions seen with software/AI, television,
unimagined. Through a series of such as “What is Communication?,” plastics, and the internet. Specifically,
intellectual provocations, Amerika “What are Codes?,” and “What is Jucan shows how these (dis)simula-
critically reflects on whether cre- Technical Imagination?,” the work tion machines and performative
ativity itself is, at root, a nonhuman touches on theater, photography, film, objects construct impoverished
information behavior that emerges television, and more. Originally writ- pictures of the world, ensuring
from an onto-operational presence ten in 1978, but only posthumously a repeatable sameness through
experiencing an otherworldly published in German, the book is processes of hollowing out embodied
aesthetic sensibility. one of the clearest statements of histories and lived experience.
Flusser’s theory of communication as
Playful and provocative, My Life “Beautifully argued.”
involving a variably mediated relation
as an Artificial Creative Intelligence between humans and the world.
—Alexandra Juhasz,
flips the script on contemporary Brooklyn College, CUNY
AI research. “Refreshes, challenges and blasts open SENSING MEDIA: AESTHETICS,
unexpected vistas.” PHILOSOPHY, AND CULTURES
“This book is an expression of the OF MEDIA
—Seán Cubitt,
truth that you’re a robot.” University of Melbourne 296 pages, August 2023
—GPT-3
SENSING MEDIA: AESTHETICS,
9781503636071 Paper $30.00  $24.00 sale
SENSING MEDIA: AESTHETICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND CULTURES
PHILOSOPHY, AND CULTURES OF MEDIA
OF MEDIA
236 pages, December 2022
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SENSING MEDIA: AESTHETICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND CULTURES OF MEDIA 15

 Melville’s Democracy Writing the Mind Reading the Obscene
Radical Figuration and Social Cognition in Nineteenth- Transgressive Editors and the Class
Political Form Century American Fiction Politics of US Literature
Jennifer Greiman Hannah Walser Jordan S. Carroll
Across Melville’s five decades of Readers are believed to make use WINNER OF THE MLA PRIZE FOR
INDEPENDENT SCHOLARS
writing, from his early Pacific novels of “Theory of Mind,” the general
to his late poetry, Greiman identifies human capacity to attribute mental Carroll reveals new insights about
a literary formalism that is radically states to other people. In many the editors who fought the most
political and carries the project of well-known nineteenth-century famous anti-censorship battles of
democratic theory in new directions. American novels, however, charac- the twentieth century. As Carroll
Recovering Melville’s readings in ters behave in ways that are opaque. argues, transgressive editors, such
political philosophy and aesthetics, Walser dives into these unintelligible as Barney Rosset, Hugh Hefner,
Greiman shows how he engaged with moments to map the weaknesses and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, taught
key problems in political theory—the of Theory of Mind and explore their readers to approach even the
paradox of foundations, the vicious alternative frameworks for interpret- most scandalizing texts with the
circles of sovereign power, the ing behavior. Walser explains how same professional reserve they
fragility of the people—to produce experimental models of cognition employed in their occupations.
a body of radical democratic art lead to some of the strangest formal Along the way, these editors kicked
and thought. Scenes of green and features of canonical American texts off a middle-class sexual revolution
growing life, circular structures, and by authors such as Charles Brockden in which white-collar professionals
images of a groundless world emerge Brown, Herman Melville, Martin imagined they could control
as forms for understanding democ- Delany, Harriet Beecher Stowe, sexuality through management
racy as a collective project in flux. In Charles Chesnutt, and Mark Twain. science. With this provocative work,
Melville’s experimental aesthetics, Walser invites us to reconsider not Carroll calls into question some of
Greiman finds a significant precursor just our assumptions about the novel the most sensational claims about
to the tradition of radical democratic as a form, but contemporary con- obscenity, suggesting that when
theory in the US and France that cepts in social cognition, including transgression becomes a sign of class
emphasizes transience and creativity gaslighting and learned helplessness, distinction, we must abandon the
over the foundations and forms with greater rigor. idea that obscenity always overturns
prized by liberalism. hierarchies and disrupts social order.
“A stunning reevaluation of the work
“An excellent book, wonderfully fiction does to experiment with the “Thoroughly enjoyable.”
written and researched.” problem of other people’s minds.” —Sarah Brouillette,
—Branka Arsic, —Sari Altschuler, Carleton University
Columbia University Northeastern University POST*45
272 pages, July 2022 280 pages, November 2021
350 pages, January 2023 9781503629486 Paper $28.00  $22.40 sale
9781503633322 Cloth $70.00  $56.00 sale 9781503630079 Cloth $60.00  $48.00 sale

16 AMERICAN LITERATURE POST*45

The Strange Career of Crisis Style Genres of Privacy in
Racial Liberalism The Aesthetics of Repair Postwar America
Joseph Darda Michael Dango Palmer Rampell
This book traces the rise of liberal Dango theorizes how aesthetic style Rampell reveals the surprising role
antiracism, showing how reformers’ manages crisis—and why taking genre fiction played in redefining the
faith in the moral arc of the universe crisis seriously means taking aesthet- category of the private person in the
has undercut future movements with ics seriously. Detoxing, filtering, postwar period. Triangulating novels
the insistence that racism constitutes bingeing, and ghosting: these are and films with archival discoveries
a time-limited crisis to be solved four actions that have come to define and historical and legal research,
with time-limited remedies. Most how people deal with living in a Rampell provides new readings
historians attribute the shortcomings world apparently in permanent cri- of Patricia Highsmith, Dorothy B.
of the civil rights era to a conserva- sis. As Dango argues, these terms can Hughes, Philip K. Dick, Octavia
tive backlash or to the fracturing of also describe contemporary art and Butler, Chester Himes, Stephen King,
the liberal establishment in the late literature. The book discusses social Cormac McCarthy, and others. The
1960s, but the civil rights movement media filters alongside the minimal- book pairs the right of privacy for
also faced resistance from a liberal ism of Donald Judd and La Monte heterosexual sex with queer and
“frontlash” from antiredistributive Young and the television shows The proto-feminist crime fiction; racial-
allies who constrained what the West Wing and True Detective. It ized police surveillance at midcentury
movement could demand and how reflects on the modernist cuisine of with Black crime fiction; Roe v. Wade
it could demand it. Telling the stories Ferran Adrià and the fashion design with science fiction; the Child Abuse
of Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Clark, W. of Issey Miyake. And, it dissects writ- Prevention and Treatment Act with
E. B. Du Bois, John Howard Griffin, ing by Barbara Browning, Raymond horror; and the right to die with
Pauli Murray, Lillian Smith, Richard Carver, Mark Danielewski, Jennifer westerns. While we are accustomed
Wright, and others, Darda reveals Egan, Tao Lin, David Mitchell, Zadie to defenses of fiction for its capacity
how Americans learned to wait on Smith, and others. Crisis Style is at to represent fully rendered private
time for racial change and the endur- once a taxonomy of contemporary life, Rampell suggests that we might
ing harm of that trust in the clock. cultural production and a theoriza- value genre fiction for its capacity to
tion of action in a world always in theorize the meaning of the protean
“Provides essential bearings for our need of repair. concept of privacy.
current moment.”
—Daniel Martinez HoSang, “Irrepressibly illuminating.” “Crisp and lucid.”
Yale University —Anna Kornbluh, —Sean McCann,
University of Illinois, Chicago author of A Pinnacle of Feeling
POST*45
300 pages, March 2022 POST*45 POST*45
9781503630925 Paper $26.00  $20.80 sale 336 pages, November 2021 240 pages, June 2022
9781503629554 Paper $30.00  $24.00 sale 9781503631892 Paper $30.00  $24.00 sale

POST*45 17
 American Graphic Writing Our Extinction Reader’s Block
Disgust and Data in Anthropocene Fiction and A History of Reading Differences
Contemporary Literature Vertical Science Matthew Rubery
Rebecca B. Clark Patrick Whitmarsh MATTHEW RUBERY’S EXPLORATION OF
THE INFLUENCE NEURODIVERGENCE HAS
“Graphic” is a term tellingly at Revealing the ways that literature ON THE WAYS INDIVIDUALS READ ASKS
odds with itself. On the one hand, has engaged the history of vertical US TO CONSIDER THAT THERE MAY BE NO
ONE DEFINITION OF READING.
it seems to evoke the grotesque; science and linked it to increasing
on the other hand, it promises environmental precarity, Whitmarsh Drawing on personal testimonies
the geometrically streamlined in examines works by writers such as gathered from literature, film, life
the form of graphs and diagrams. Don DeLillo, Karen Tei Yamashita, writing, social media, medical case
Clark’s innovation is to ask what Reza Negarestani, and Colson studies, and other sources to express
happens when the same moment Whitehead alongside postwar how cognitive differences—from
in a work of literature is graphic scientific programs including dyslexia, hyperlexia, and alexia to
in both ways at once. Her answer the Space Race, atmospheric and synesthesia, hallucinations, and
suggests the graphic turn in con- underground nuclear testing, and dementia—have shaped people’s
temporary literature is intimately geological expeditions such as experiences both on and off the
implicated in the fraught dynamics Project Mohole (which attempted page, Rubery contends that there is
of identification. Clark analyzes the to drill to the earth’s mantle). As no single activity known as reading.
contemporary graphic along three Whitmarsh argues, by focusing Instead, there are multiple ways
specific axes: the ethnographic, the readers’ attention on the fragility of of reading (and, for that matter,
pornographic, and the infographic. postwar life through a vertical lens, not reading) despite the ease with
In each chapter, Clark’s explication Anthropocene fiction highlights the which we use the term. Pushing
of the double graphic reads a interconnections between human us to rethink what it means to
canonical author against literary, behavior and planetary change. read, Reader’s Block moves toward
visual and/or performance works These fictions situate industrial an understanding of reading as a
by Black and/or female creators, history within the much longer spectrum that is capacious enough
demonstrating how closely and narrative of geological time and to accommodate the full range
uncomfortably yoked together reframe scientific progress as a story of activities documented in this
disgust and data have become in our through which humankind writes fascinating and highly original book.
increasingly graph-ick world. itself out of existence.
“Rubery is one of the most sensitive
“Stylishly written.” “A crucial touchstone for current and original scholars working with
—Eugenie Brinkema, debates in ecocriticism.” literature today.”
Massachusetts Institute —Christina Lupton,
—Caren Irr, author of Love and the Novel
of Technology Brandeis University
POST*45 288 pages, October 2022
308 pages, December 2022 POST*45 9781503632493 Cloth $26.00  $20.80 sale
9781503634237 Paper $30.00  $24.00 sale 224 pages, April 2023
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18 POST*45 CULTURAL STUDIES
The Persian Prince Outrage The Shadow of the Empress
The Rise and Resurrection of an The Arts and the Creation Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of
Imperial Archetype of Modernity the Habsburg Monarchy
Hamid Dabashi Katherine Giuffre Larry Wolff
With a title borrowed from A cultural revolution in England, A BEGUILING EXPLORATION OF THE LAST
HABSBURG MONARCHS’ GRIP ON EUROPE’S
Machiavelli, Dabashi articulates France, and the United States HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL IMAGINATION.
a bold new idea of the Persian helped usher in modernity. Working
Prince—a metaphor of political alongside the better documented The Shadow of the Empress explores
authority, a figurative ideal deeply political and economic revolutions how the changing circumstances of
rooted in the collective memories of of the time, this cultural revolution cultural production and reception
multiple nations, and a literary con- also ushered in the modern era of before, during, and after World War
struct that connected Muslim em- continuous revolution. Focusing I reshaped the political meanings of
pires across time and space. Drawing on the period between 1847 and the fairy tale opera Die Frau ohne
on works from Classical Antiquity 1937, Outrage examines in depth Schatten. Historian Larry Wolff
and the vast Persianate worlds from six of the cultural “battles” that interweaves the story of the opera’s
India to the Mediterranean, as well were key parts of this revolution: composition and performance
as the Hebrew Bible and European the novels of the Brontë sisters, the history with a personal narrative of
medieval mirrors for princes, Da- paintings of the Impressionists, the his Habsburg and Viennese family.
bashi reveals the construction of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, The Reflecting on the seismic cultural
Persian Prince as a potent archetype. Ballets Russes’s production of Le shifts that rocked post-imperial
He traces this archetype through its Sacre du printemps, James Joyce’s Europe, Wolff follows the real-life
varied historic gestations and finds it Ulysses, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Emperor and Empress through the
resurfacing in postcolonial political Their Eyes Were Watching God. rise of Nazism, World War II, and
thought as a rebel, a prophet, a poet, Using contemporaneous reviews in the Cold War up until Zita’s death in
and a nomad. the press as well as other historical 1989, when she had herself become a
material, we can see that these now fairy-tale figure.
“Disarmingly accessible.” canonical works provoked outrage
—Laura U. Marks, “A silver rose of a book.”
Simon Fraser University
at the time of their release because —Michael Steinberg,
they addressed critical points of Brown University
328 pages, June 2023 social upheaval and transformation
9781503636231 Paper $30.00  $24.00 sale 432 pages, May 2023
in ways that engaged broad 9781503635647 Paper $26.00  $20.80 sale
audiences with subversive messages.
208 pages, June 2023
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CULTURAL STUDIES 19
S TA N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
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