New Books Network

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us your suggestion on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.
In this episode you’ll hear about: what a book proposal is and isn’t, why you have to write one, the importance of seeking the right “fit” for your manuscript, how to pitch a quirky book, the difference between a book’s topic and its argument, how to summarize your project in just one sentence, and a discussion of The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors (Princeton UP, 2021)
Our guest is: Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, an experienced developmental editor and publishing consultant for academic authors. She is the author of The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors.
You have to write a book proposal to get published, but most scholars receive no training on how to do so, and you may have never even seen a proposal before you’re expected to produce your own. The Book Proposal Book cuts through the mystery and guides you step by step through the process of crafting a compelling proposal and pitching it to university presses and other academic publishers. Whether you’re hoping to publish your first book or you’re a seasoned author with an unfinished proposal languishing on your hard drive, The Book Proposal Book provides honest, empathetic, and invaluable advice on how to overcome common sticking points and get your book published. It also shows why a well-conceived proposal can help lead to an outstanding book.
Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-producer of the Academic Life podcasts, and a historian of women and gender.
Listeners to this episode might be interested in:
The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors, by Laura Portwood-Stacer
Dr. Portwood-Stacer’s Manuscript and Editing Workshops
Dr. Portwood-Stacer’s website
Handbook for Academic Authors, by Beth Luey
Writing and Publishing Your Book: A Guide for Experts in Every Field, by Melody Herr
From Dissertation to Book, by William Germano
The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers
Story Craft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction, by Jack Hart
The Business of Being a Writer, by Jane Friedman
This episode was originally published on 8/12/2021

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body (Routledge, 2026) provides an epistemology of the body as it relates to subjectivity through an analysis of selected works of Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett. Presented in three parts, the book explores a fundamental premise: that there is a traumatic and alienating dimension to embodiment that resists expression within representational systems and is core to the being of any subject. In Part One, The Epistemology of the Body, Meehan O'Callaghan approaches a theory of the body as traumatic by framing it as a question, a gap in knowledge through the lens of psychoanalysis and theatre studies. Part Two, The Body of Drama, is devoted to a study of the body in the works of Beckett and Artaud from the perspective of psychoanalysis. Part Three, The Body Between Being and Non-Being, provides a deeper exploration of how the interrogation of the body opens onto a question of being and uses the insights gained from the dialectical encounter of psychoanalysis with the specific works of Beckett and Artaud to apply them to contemporary and scholarly issues of the body. Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives through Beckett and Artaud will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for academics and scholars of Lacanian studies, psychoanalytic studies, the body, disability studies, and literary and theatre studies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When I heard that Leo XIV’s first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” was about “Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” my first reaction was dread. Turns out I was wrong; always something new out of Chicago.....
This is an experiment (akin to Books in Dark Times and Recall This Story and Recall This B-Side and to JP's earlier Hannah Arendt articles) in soliloquy. You can consult footnotes and read a transcript by heading back to the article in its original form here.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The fascinating story of a British army chaplain's buggery trial in 1774 reveals surprising truths about early America.
On the eve of the American Revolution, the British army considered the case of a chaplain, Robert Newburgh, who had been accused of having sex with a man. Newburgh's enemies cited his flamboyant appearance, defiance of military authority, and seduction of soldiers as proof of his low character. Consumed by fears that the British Empire would soon be torn asunder, his opponents claimed that these supposed crimes against nature translated to crimes against the king.
In Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh (JHU Press, 2024) historian John McCurdy tells this compelling story of male intimacy and provides an unparalleled glimpse inside eighteenth-century perceptions of queerness. By demanding to have his case heard, Newburgh invoked Enlightenment ideals of equality, arguing passionately that his style of dress and manner should not affect his place in the army or society. His accusers equated queer behavior with rebellion, and his defenders would go on to join the American cause. Newburgh's trial offers some clues to understanding a peculiarity of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: while gay acts were prohibited by law in much of the British empire, the newly formed United States was comparatively uninterested in legislating against same-sex intimacy.
McCurdy imagines what life was like for a gay man in early America and captures the voices of those who loved and hated Newburgh, revealing how sexuality and revolution informed one another. Vicious and Immoral is the first book to place homosexuality in conversation with the American Revolution, and it dares us to rethink the place of LGBTQ people in the founding of the nation.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Where and to whom do ancient things belong? What happens when they are stolen—not by a colonial power, but by a national museum claiming them as state patrimony? What kinds of healing and restitution can follow?
In The Absent Stone: Mexican Patrimony and the Aftershocks of State Theft (Duke UP, 2026), Dr. Sandra Rozental tells the story of the Piedra de los Tecomates, the largest stone monument in the Americas, popularly identified as the pre-Hispanic rain deity Tlaloc. In 1964, the Mexican state called in the military to forcefully relocate this 167-ton carving from the town of Coatlinchan to Mexico City’s National Anthropology Museum. Using in-depth historical and ethnographic research, Rozental traces how the stone’s absence continues to affect and unsettle Coatlinchan and its residents decades later, revealing the tensions between patrimony, nationalism, territory, memory, and materiality in Mexico. 
Questioning the premise that historical artifacts belong in museums under state-sanctioned care, The Absent Stone pushes contemporary critical scholarship on monuments and museum collections beyond the language of law, heritage, and cultural property, demonstrating how ancient things remain bound to the people and places they come from even after they are removed and displayed elsewhere.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.