Tag: European Studies

Byron’s engagement with Eastern European writers: Mickiewicz and Pushkin

22 September 2025 Guest Post

This is a guest post by Jonathan Gross, author of The European Byron Mobility, Cosmopolitanism, and Chameleon Although there have been many studies of Byron’s European impact, I consider the Eastern European reach of Byron. Mazepa, a painting by Vernet (‘Mazepa and the Wolves’, 1826), and another study, by a...

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The warlike king who died in his bed

15 September 2025 Author Interviews

This is an author interview by Dylan Motin, author of How Louis XIV Survived His Hegemonic Bid Q1. Why a book about Louis XIV and not any other king? Louis XIV’s France belonged in a rare category of states. Not only was it a great power but also what international...

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Mourning the dissolution of the monasteries

6 July 2025 Guest Post

This is a guest post by Lisa Hopkins, author of Bare Ruined Choirs: Sacred Spaces in Four Early Modern Plays When Shakespeare writes in Sonnet 73 of ‘Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang’, he was referring to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, begun in 1536 by King...

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The silent scene of reading: four moments of aesthetic experience

27 April 2025 Author Interviews

Nathan Wainstein interviews Bryan Counter, author of Four Moments of Aesthetic Experience Nathan Wainstein: At the outset of the book, you say that it ‘will approach aesthetic experience with a focus on life’. I find this interest in immediate or actual life, as opposed to the more curated encounters that...

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A long-term view of feelings about immigrants

5 March 2025 Guest Post

This is a guest post by Ben Braber, author of Changes in Attitudes to Immigrants in Britain, 1921-2021: From Alien to Migrant The public debate about immigration is raging in Britain and abroad, but English language use keeps changing. That usage denotes changing attitudes to immigrants. Academic researchers have noticed...

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The power of literature: ‘Colette and the Incest Taboo’

19 February 2025 Guest Post

This is a guest post by Carol Mastrangelo Bové, author of Colette and the Incest Taboo. Julia Kristeva’s book Colette sparked my interest in an author I had not understood when I first read her decades ago. So literary critics may well influence our tastes and also our values, I...

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Russian studies will never be irrelevant

19 January 2025 Guest Post

This is a guest post by Lee A. Farrow, author of Potential Russia When the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist in 1991, I had just completed my master’s degree and my first summer in Russia. Immediately, people assumed that my field was now pointless and irrelevant, and casually commented...

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Islamic leadership and the state in Eurasia: a historical perspective

28 November 2024 Author Interviews

This is an interview by Galina M. Yemelianova, author of Islamic Leadership and the State in Eurasia Q1: Why did you write this book now? Answer: Since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, Islam and Islamism have been at the centre of media, political and academic...

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Recovering an eighteenth-century gem

14 July 2024 Guest Post

This is a guest post by Melvyn New, author of Apphia Peach, George Lord Lyttelton, and ‘The Correspondents’: An Annotated Edition of a Forgotten Gem (1775) I first became interested in The Correspondents as the result of an essay in The Shandean, by Peter de Voogd, outlining the work’s several...

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A life with Wittgenstein

7 April 2024 Guest Post

This is a guest post by Peter Hacker, author of A Beginner’s Guide to the Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein Wittgenstein studies flourished in the second half of the twentieth century, as philosophers struggled with the interpretation of his two great masterpieces, the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations. Many of...

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