New Books in Literary Studies

What happens when performance defies social and political boundaries? Performing Transgression: Crowds and Bodies in Heian Japan (Harvard University Press, 2026) offers
a new cultural history of non-elite spectacle in Heian Japan
(794–1185), uncovering how performances on the margins—boisterous
dengaku music and dance, daring sangaku acrobatics, and the infectious
lyrics of imayō songs—challenged and fascinated the aristocracy.

Ashton Lazarus reveals how these unruly arts were documented by the
very elites they unsettled, appearing in historical chronicles, diaries,
prose, poetry, and illustrated scrolls. More than mere precursors to
later forms like noh and kyōgen, these performances formed a dynamic
cultural force with real political impact. By tracing their influence
through literary studies, performance studies, and historiography,
Lazarus rethinks the interplay between politics, class, and culture in
Heian Japan.

Performing Transgression illuminates how acts of defiance
and creative expression resonate across time, offering fresh insights
into the ways performance bridges the vanished past and the present.
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Camille’s Lakou (Vanderbilt UP, 2025), a novel by Guadeloupean writer and educator Marie Léticée, tells the story of Camille, a young Caribbean girl living with her single‑parent mother in a 1960s urbanized zone at the edge of Pointe‑à‑Pitre, Guadeloupe, following her through her adult life as a Caribbean migrant in Florida. Léticée explores neocolonial culture clash and identity conflict themes that will be familiar to readers of the Francophone Caribbean coming‑of‑age novel and its revisions by women writers such as Capécia, Lacrosil, Manicom, Schwarz‑Bart, Condé, Pineau, and others. Léticée makes it her own by fleshing out a time and place not well‑represented in Guadeloupean literature. While previous bildungsromanefrom the writers mentioned here typically focus on rural peasant or urban bourgeois settings, Camille’s Lakoushifts location to an impoverished urban environment. “Lakou” is translated as “courtyard” or, more colloquially, “yard.” The author explores the culture and politics of lakou society while raising the issue of how this social dynamic is transformed through the impact of globalization and dispersal into a diasporic experience outside the island milieu of Camille’s childhood.In a collaborative translation effort between the author and Kevin Meehan, Camille’s Lakou will bring the realities and joys of Léticée’s Guadeloupe to an English audience for the first time.
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In this interview, we speak with Laura B. McGrath, an Assistant Professor of English at Temple University and the author of Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction (Princeton University Press, 2026). Her writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Atlantic.

Middlemen rewrites
literary history from the perspective of one of its most important but
least visible figures: the literary agent. Chronicling the story of
agents in the United States from the 1950s to today, Laura McGrath
uncovers their critical role in the making of American literature. From
the famed three-martini lunch to the Frankfurt Book Fair, Middlemen
takes readers behind the scenes to show how agents influence what we
read. Along the way, it explains why many debut novelists never publish
another book, why agents champion short story collections even though
they sell poorly, how agents advocate for writers of color in a system
that values whiteness, and why there are so many New York novels.

Weaving
together original archival research, data analysis, and interviews with
scores of agents and other publishing professionals, Middlemen demonstrates
that agents—eighty percent of whom are in fact women—are much more than
“middlemen.” As intermediaries between author and publisher, agents act
as advocates, matchmakers, negotiators, and tastemakers, and they must
balance artistic values with the commercial imperatives of publishing
conglomerates. The book describes the decisive role agents have played
in celebrated novels—from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist—but
also in the creation of entire literary categories like the debut
novel, the story collection, postmodernism, multiethnic fiction, and
world literature.

Featuring profiles of agents past and present
such as Sterling Lord, Lynn Nesbit, Candida Donadio, Marie Brown, and
Andrew Wylie, along with perspectives from agents at all stages of their
careers, Middlemen is an entertaining and eye-opening account of how literary fiction—and the literary canon—is made.
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A conversation featuring the editors of the new Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing series Pathika - Studies of South Asian Texts and Traditions (HAS, 2026)

Pathika – Sanskrit for "traveler" or "one who follows a path" – is a new series dedicated to the textual traditions of South Asia, engaging with the rich landscape of South Asian literary and religious traditions. The series encompasses critical editions, annotated translations, and in-depth studies of texts spanning the full breadth of South Asian traditions. From inscriptions to previously untranslated manuscripts, Pathika provides a venue to both established scholars and emerging researchers to publish their work on the textual traditions of South Asia. The volumes adhere to rigorous philological standards while making important texts and translations accessible to a wider academic audience. Pathika particularly welcomes interdisciplinary approaches that situate texts within their historical, religious, and cultural contexts. The series fully supports all South Asian scripts.
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In this episode, the editors and managing editor of Science Fiction Studies offer an inside look at the journal, discussing its place in the field and revisiting notable articles that have contributed to the study of science fiction. Science Fiction Studies is published three times a year by University of California Press. For more information about the journal, including subscription and submission information, please visit online.ucpress.edu/sfs. If you are interested in supporting the work of UC Press and its Journals Program, please consider making a charitable donation to the UC Press Foundation.

To learn more about the UC Press Foundation and how to contribute, please visit ucpress.edu/support-us.

Articles mentioned:

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.; Antimancer: Cybernetics and Art in Gibson's 'Count Zero.' Science Fiction Studies March 1995; 22 (1): 63-86. Link.

John Rieder; On Defining SF, or Not. Science Fiction Studies July 2010; 37 (2): 191-201: Link.

Paul Kincaid; Review: H.G. Wells: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Lourdes López-Ropero. Science Fiction Studies March 2026; 53 (1): 190-193: Link.

Veronica Hollinger; Introduction: Women in Science Fiction and Other Hopeful Monsters. Science Fiction Studies July 1990; 17 (2): 129-135: Link.

Darko Suvin; A, B, and C. The Significant Context of SF: A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation. Science Fiction Studies March 1973; 1 (1): 44-50: Link.

Special Issue on Science Fiction and Postmodernism. Science Fiction Studies Nov. 1991: Link.

A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals

Phoenix Alexander is the Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction and Fantasy at the University of California, Riverside, and Book Review Editor of Science Fiction Studies.

Stephen Darren Dougherty is Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Translation at the University of Agder and an Editor of Science Fiction Studies.

Colin Milburn is Distinguished Professor and Gary Snyder Chair in Science and the Humanities at the University of California, Davis, and an Editor of Science Fiction Studies.

Patrick Sharp is Professor of Liberal Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and an Editor of Science Fiction Studies.

Elizabeth (Lisa) Swanstrom is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah and an Editor of Science Fiction Studies.
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