New Books in Western European Studies

About New Books in Western European Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Publisher

New Books Network

Category

history · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Apr 2008

Latest episode

16 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 2,530 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   16 Oct 2026

   Governing Islam in Austria and Germany, with Farid Hafez

   In this episode, hosts Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by Farid Hafez to discuss his most recently published book Governing Islam in Austria and Germany: From Colonial Times to the Present (Oxford UP, 2026). Hafez’s recent work centres on the comparative analysis of the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the German rule in Tanzania, Togo and Cameroon, and in particular their respective treatment of Muslims in each case to then in turn shed light on the current governing of Muslimness in both. Farid Hafez is an assistant professor in International Relations at William and Mary, and also a senior researcher at Georgetown University.

2. 

   15 Oct 2026

   Racism and Antiracism in Divided Germany with Michelle Lynn Kahn and Lauren Stokes (Cornell UP, 2026)

   Racism and Antiracism in Divided Germany (Cornell UP, 2026) addresses how racism expresses itself and what it means to be antiracist by tracing the history of racism and antiracist activism in East, West, and unified Germany. As far-right extremism surges in Germany today, Germans from across the political spectrum are increasingly grappling with the presence of racism in a country that is still coming to terms with its Nazi past. However, these public discussions are not always historically informed, and racism in Germany is often dismissed as a fringe phenomenon rather than part of mainstream society The contributions in this volume juxtapose the experiences of multiple racialized groups to collectively show how racism, rightwing extremism, and antiforeigner violence have long been embedded in the center of both East and West German society. Germany's unification in the 1990s produced a deadly collision of two distinct yet overlapping cultures of racism that persists today. The volume also highlights Germany's long overlooked history of antiracist activism, providing historical lessons on how to combat racism today. Contributors: Rita Chin, Christopher Ewing, Sheer Ganor, Daniela Gress, Christopher A. Molnar, Paige Newhouse, Jannis Panagiotidis, Hans-Christian Petersen, Patrice G. Poutrus, Thomas Prennig, Bill Sharman, Brian Van Wyck, Johanna M. Wetzel Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Guests: Michelle Lynn Kahn (she/her) is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond and author of Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Lauren Stokes (she/her) is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University and author of Fear of the Family: Guest Workers and Family Migration in the Federal Republic of Germany (Oxford University Press, 2022)

3. 

   10 Oct 2026

   Europe in the Eleventh Century: Beyond Revolution and Reform with Charles West (Oxford UP, 2025)

   Eleventh-century Europe was diverse and fast-changing. Historians have often debated this change through two sets of competing arguments, one about the shifting role of the Church and the Papacy, and the other about the rise of castellan lords and a proliferation in violence. Yet these arguments about 'Church Reform' and 'Feudal Revolution' only really apply to one part of Europe, the Latin West. Europe in the Eleventh Century: Beyond Revolution and Reform (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Professor Charles West takes its cue from contemporary perceptions of Europe, and includes Byzantium (or East Rome) and Muslim al-Andalus in scope. In doing so, it presents a new perspective on Europe in the period. Its chapters assess different scales of action and interaction within this wide space. They take from the reader from the peasants living in small village settlements, via the great city of Constantinople, the taifa emirates, kingdoms from Ireland to Hungary, and the two universal empires, up to contemporary ideas, cosmologies, and representations of the wider world. Viewed in this broad setting, the Latin West's remarkable expansion during this period, dramatically illustrated by the First Crusade at the century's end, can best be understood as the poorly controlled overspilling of internal dynamics, as the established public order was disrupted. Elsewhere in Europe, existing structures proved more resilient and better able to accommodate internal economic and social development, though remaining vulnerable to aggression from outside. 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.

Inside a recent episode

Thomas Smith, "Rewriting the First Crusade: Epistolary Culture in the Middle Ages" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)

Published 16 Oct 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] But one of the main concerns that the authors of the letters actually have is for their souls and the spiritual efficacy of the army. So their main concern in these letters that are sent back to genuine letters and actually the ones that are infected is for people to pray on behalf of the crusade army. They're really, really interested and concerned to secure batteries of prayers from religious communities in the west because they want people to pray for their souls to pray for the fallen crusaders, their fallen comrades who have died but also to pray for the success of the crusade itself. So it's really interesting because it helps to show that right from the very beginning, even during the campaign of the first crusade, they see it as being actually crusading on a home front as well that people at home play a role in affecting the outcome and performance of the crusade. […]

Who has been a guest on New Books in Western European Studies

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Julie Singer
• Enrique Fernández
• Darlene Abreu-Ferreira
• Elisabeth Åsbrink
• Jonathan Teubner

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

243

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.6 / 5

13 ratings

Spotify

4.6 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 82 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

97

Social presence

0

YouTube

72

Engagement

96

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Guest appearances

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