Category Archives: Book Excerpts

A-Z of Jane Austen

By | November 21, 2022

Much of The A-Z of Jane Austen pays attention to what you might call the ‘surface’ of Austen’s writings – to activities such as dance or matchmaking, for example, whose centrality in her storylines might seem to go without saying. In so doing I’m making the case that readings of Austen don’t necessarily have to… Read More »

The Medical Environmental Humanities and Public Health

By | August 31, 2022

We’re celebrating the publication of the Bloomsbury Handbook to the Medical-Environmental Humanities with this adapted excerpt from the introduction, which explains why we need to bring medical and environmental humanities into conversation with each other now more than ever.

Escapism in contemporary American fiction

By | August 24, 2022

We’re celebrating the publication of Escape, Escapism, Escapology: American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century, in which John Limon traces the central theme of 21st-century United States fiction: the desire to escape at a time of inescapable globalization. This is an extract from the first chapter, Notes from Neverland.

Life in A Bubble

By | April 21, 2021

The odds of being alive are so incredibly slim. Humble beginnings some 3.8 billion years ago on a rocky planet that, ejected by the Big Bang, found its place just right in a Goldilocks distance from the sun, a location perfectly suitable for the miracle we call life.

Edwidge Danticat on Diaspora and Identity

By | February 22, 2021

The Haitian diaspora today, in my view, is very big and complex. You now have a lot of Haitian-born millennials who are adding another very important layer to the conversation. Some of them are in media, and what is highlighted about them is not even that they’re Haitian. They’re just out there excelling and doing their thing.

What is tone?

By | January 7, 2021

Guest post by Judith Roof The below is an excerpt of the preface from Tone by Judith Roof Key Tone Tone  Def:  Etymology  mid-14c.,  “musical  sound  or  note,”  from  Old  French  ton  “musical  sound,  speech,  words”  (13c.)  and directly from Latin tonus “a sound, tone, accent,” literally “stretching”  (in  Medieval  Latin,  a  term  peculiar  to … Read More »

The Filipino Author as Producer

By | January 19, 2019

This week we’re celebrating the publication of Critical Creative Writing: Essential Readings on the Writer’s Craft, a comprehensive introduction to the key debates in creative writing today, from the ethics of appropriation to the politics of literary evaluation. Today’s post is an excerpt from Conchitina Cruz’s essay “The Filipino Author as Producer.” My profile in… Read More »

“Somewhere in the United States the hamburger was born”

By | July 4, 2018

As the barbecues and grills heat up all over the country for Fourth of July, discover the origin(s) of the all-American meal with this excerpt from Carol J. Adams’ Burger from our Object Lessons series. The history of the hamburger features a man, the Inventor, “American” of course. There he was toiling on his own, when… Read More »

Silencing Women

By | September 28, 2016

An excerpt from the Object Lessons book Silence by John Biguenet In our first visit to Florence, while still students, my wife and I found a little restaurant near our bat-infested pensione as sunset turned the Arno bronze. Having been raised by her grandmother from Viareggio, the nearby beach resort, Marsha ordered our meal in… Read More »

Tracing a Literary Fantasia: an extract from Samuel Beckett and Arnold Geulincx

By | June 1, 2012

'With a few chapters left to write of Murphy in January 1936, Samuel Beckett ventured within what he called ‘the abhorred gates’ of Trinity College, Dublin library for the first time since resigning from a teaching post at his old University 4 years earlier. He returned repeatedly to the library over the following 3 months… Read More »