New Books in Italian Studies

Hosts discuss a new book on Muslim Sicily's history and legacy with authors Nuha Alshaar and Shainool Jiwa.

["Morteza Hajizadeh interviews David Potter of the University of Michigan about Master of Rome: A Life of Julius Caesar, published by Oxford University Press in 2025.", "Potter says he wrote the book to read Caesar through Caesar's own Gallic War and Civil War instead of only through Cicero.", "He connects Caesar's family myth, the Social War, and his education under Antonius Knipho and Strabo to a political style built on oratory, leverage, and disciplined self-presentation.", "The conversation centers on the Catiline crisis, the Pompey-Crassus alliance, the Gallic Wars, and Potter's claim that Roman institutional failure made Caesar possible."]

["A neo-fascist song in Sardinia led Marta Lorimer toward a PhD on the far right's relationship with Europe, not just its rejection.", "Camilla Locatelli, host for the New Books Network's European Politics section and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies, interviews Marta Lorimer, a Cardiff University lecturer in politics and co-editor of the Journal of Political Research and Exchange.", "Lorimer argues that the Italian MSI, Alleanza Nazionale, Front National, and Rassemblement National repeatedly used Europe as identity, civilization, liberty, and sovereignty while distinguishing it from the European Union.", "She links that history to Meloni's European positioning, the weakening of the cordon sanitaire in the European Parliament, and the book's archival analysis of documents from France and Italy."]

Martha Feldman says Alessandro Moreschi is the only recorded castrato voice, and her book Castrato Phantoms traces that sound through Roman opera, the Sistine Chapel, and family memory.

["New Books in Late Antiquity hosts Mike Montilla and Jake Nabel on The Arsacids of Rome, Misunderstanding in Roman-Parthian Relations, published by University of California Press in 2025.", "Nabel, the Tom Brose Early Career Professor of Classical Studies and assistant professor at Penn State, argues that Roman and Parthian elites used royal children as diplomatic leverage rather than dungeon hostages.", "He contrasts the Latin obsides and Roman triumphs with Parthian fosterage, where a dayag could raise a ruler's child inside another aristocratic household.", "The discussion moves from the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE and Nero's Armenian settlement in 63 CE to Babylonian diaries, Greek inscriptions from Iberia, and Iranian sources that complicate a Roman-only reading."]

Jessica Clark argues from about 90 theater buildings and roughly 928 artifacts that early Italian theater cannot be read through Roman plays alone.

Kim Bowes’s Surviving Rome examines the economic lives of the Roman world’s neglected 90 percent through everyday writing, archaeological evidence, and economic calculations.

Rhys Edmonds explains how Rome’s elected Republic, in which citizens voted on laws and magistrates held fixed terms, gave way to Augustus’ personal rule.

Caleb Zacharin interviews David Frankfurter, editor of The Brill Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic and professor of religion at Boston University.

Maureen Miller and Neslihan Şenocak explain how urbanization, city-states, and local archives made medieval Italy unusually rich for studying ordinary people’s religious lives between 1050 and 1300.

Luca Cottini, a Villanova University professor of Italian Studies, explains how Americanism developed through Italian immigration, American industrial exports, and competing ideas of national identity between 1888 and 1919.

This episode begins with a survey request for listeners, then transitions into an interview with Professor Anna Sergi about her book on recognizing the mafia abroad.

An interview with Cam Gray about his book 'Living with Risk in the Late Roman World', exploring how late ancient societies perceived and managed various risks.