Charlotte Brooks, "The Moys of New York and Shanghai: One Family’s Extraordinary Journey Through War and Revolution" (U California Press, 2026)

Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity

A woman miscarries and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administers and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia and spend nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work and is sentenced to 126 years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system that punishes women and queer people not for what they have done, but for who they are. In the United States, nearly three-quarters of all wrongly convicted women were convicted of crimes that never occurred at all. Valena Beety, co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project and award-winning legal scholar cited by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reveals how ordinary tragedies—a child’s sudden death, a husband who dies in his sleep—are transformed by prosecutors into murders that never happened. These “no crime” convictions disproportionately target women and queer people, whose identities are recast as evidence of guilt through bias, junk science, and entrenched stereotypes. Drawing on devastating real-life cases, Professor Beety exposes how prosecutorial overreach, flawed forensic science, and cultural panic converge—and how fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have dramatically expanded the reach of criminal law. What emerges is a chilling portrait of a legal system that increasingly criminalizes pregnancy outcomes, motherhood, and queer identity itself. Guest: A wrongful convictions litigator and former federal prosecutor, Valena Beety is the McKinney Professor of Law at Indiana University-Bloomington Maurer School of Law and a co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project. Her coursebook The Wrongful Convictions Reader is used in classrooms nationwide to teach about wrongful convictions. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler [https://christinagessler.com/] is an academic writing coach and editor. She uses her Ph.D. in history to explore which stories we tell, and what happens to those we never tell. She is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: * Reproductive Justice [https://newbooksnetwork.com/abortion-and-reproductive-justice-an-essential-guide-for-resistance] * Stitching Freedom [https://newbooksnetwork.com/stitching-freedom] * You're Doing It Wrong [https://newbooksnetwork.com/b-l-johnson-and-m-m-quinlan-youre-doing-it-wrong-e2-80-afmothering-media-and-medical-expertise-rutgers-up-2019] * Witchcraft: A History In 13 Trials [https://newbooksnetwork.com/witchcraft-a-history-in-thirteen-trials] * The Turnaway Study [https://newbooksnetwork.com/a-conversation-about-reproductive-health-and-abortion-studies] * The Coroner's Silence [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-coroners-silence-death-records-and-the-hidden-victims-of-police-violence] * Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine [https://newbooksnetwork.com/ghost-in-the-criminal-justice-machine] * Secrets of the Killing State [https://newbooksnetwork.com/secrets-of-the-killing-state] * Carceral Apartheid [https://newbooksnetwork.com/brittany-friedman-carceral-apartheid-how-lies-and-white-supremacists-run-our-prisons-unc-press-2025] Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/academic-life] And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Alexander Vandewalle, "Characters and Characterization in Mythological Video Games" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

The first book-length study on mythology reception in video games, Characters and Characterization in Mythological Video Games [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781350565852] (Bloomsbury, 2026) examines how video games characterize mythological characters from the perspectives of classical reception and game studies. Characters are vital to most stories, and many video games. They allow us to enter the fiction of a game, and facilitate our embodiment in the game world. Over time, what are initially blank slates transform into fictional existents with well-developed personalities and goals. In this context, narratology uses the term 'characterization' to refer to how character traits are ascribed to the entities we call 'characters'. How does characterization operate in games? How do players impact this process? How is mythology transformed by video games? What can games 'do' that other media cannot? After establishing a theoretical framework, this book moves to six case studies that each analyze mythological characters in a particular game: Smite, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Immortals Fenyx Rising, God of War, Theseus and Asgard's Wrath 2. The scope of these studies is diverse, incorporating examples from mainstream, indie and virtual reality gaming. While the book's main focus lies with Greco-Roman mythology, it also includes games with Norse and Egyptian settings, or with playable characters from a wide range of international mythological traditions. Through these case studies, Alexander Vandewalle leads his readers to an understanding of different modalities or 'languages' of mythology reception in games. He argues for a striking diversity in mythological games and their characters, and illuminates how the relationship between games and antiquity is fundamentally one of continuous dialogue and play. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Charlotte Brooks, "The Moys of New York and Shanghai: One Family’s Extraordinary Journey Through War and Revolution" (U California Press, 2026)

The story of the Moy family—U.S.-born Chinese-American siblings who grow up in the first half of the 20th century—is one that spans the Pacific, covering New York, Chicago, and cosmopolitan Shanghai. It’s a story that spans the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War, and the early Cold War—and stars one sibling who was an early participant in the Kuomintang…and another who records propaganda for Germany and Japan during the Second World War. In her new book, The Moys of New York and Shanghai: One Family’s Extraordinary Journey Through War and Revolution [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780520409552] (University of California Press, 2026), historian Charlotte Brooks follows the Moys as they confront discrimination in the United States, search for opportunity in cosmopolitan Shanghai, and wrestle with questions of loyalty, identity, and belonging that still resonate today. Charlotte is a historian and author who has published widely on Asian American history, especially Chinese American and Chinese diaspora history. Originally from California, she graduated from Yale and worked in mainland China and Hong Kong before earning a PhD from Northwestern University. She is a professor of history at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center. In this conversation, we talk about Charlotte’s research, the lives of the Moy siblings, and what their experiences tell us about being Chinese American in a turbulent century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Michael D. Nichols, "Batman and the Classics: Echoes of Mythology, Literature and Philosophy in the Comics and Films" (McFarland, 2026)

Fans of Batman are used to seeing the Caped Crusader associate with the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman, but what if one were to put the Dark Knight into the company of figures such as Beowulf, Robin Hood, Oedipus, and Sun Tzu, among others? Batman and the Classics: Echoes of Mythology, Literature and Philosophy in the Comics and Films [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781476697222] (McFarland, 2026) is the first book to compare famous Batman graphic novels, story arcs, and films to classic texts of literature and philosophy from around the world. Through this comparison we can see, for instance, how the epic warrior archetype of Beowulf or Roland persists in The Dark Knight Returns, or how the metaphor of the journey, found in such works as The Odyssey, occurs in the story arc Knightfall. By placing Batman stories into conversation with such classic texts, this book sheds light on the deeper meanings of key stories of the Dark Knight, as well as how long-lasting themes of literature and philosophy have persisted in the fiction of this popular character. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

European Jews in the 21st Century

What is the status of Jews in Europe in the 21st century? How do they maintain vital communities? Do they desire to remain in Europe? To remain Jewish? Where are the trendlines headed? A mere 0.1% of Europe's population is Jewish. Proportionally, this figure is at its lowest since the turn of the first millennium. European Jews' numbers have continued to decline even after the Holocaust. Once a major center of world Jewry, Europe often goes largely unmentioned in conversations about the global Jewish community. K., the European Jewish Review, is a new magazine founded in March 2021 to document and analyze the current situation of the 1.3 million Jews living in Europe. The magazine is devoted to reporting from and fostering dialogue across all the various communities of European Jewry. Daniel Solomon, the English-language editor of K. will lead a discussion with members of the editorial board of K.: Stéphane Bou (Editor of chief of K., European Jewish Review), Macha Fogel (Author at K., European Jewish Review), and Danny Trom (Senior Researcher, EHESS). This panel discussion originally took place on October 12, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]