The Edinburgh University Press Podcast

Benjamin Dalton, "Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)

Our bodies and brains are radically transformable, mutable and plastic. From the neuroplasticity of the brain to the epigenetic malleability of our bodies and of all organic life, the work of the contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou invites us to consider our plasticity as both a creative resource and an ethical challenge. Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781399540551] (Edinburgh UP, 2026) brings Malabou's philosophy into dialogue with contemporary literature and film. It reads conceptions of plasticity and neuroplasticity in Malabou through the mutant bodies of Leos Carax's films; the shape-shifting bodies of Marie Darrieussecq's novels and theatre; the terrifying, traumatic metamorphoses depicted in the fiction of Marie NDiaye; and the anarchic sexualities and identities celebrated in the cinema and writing of Alain Guiraudie. It argues that, in different ways, Malabou's philosophy and literary and filmic texts develop modes of bearing witness to plasticity which can supplement, challenge and extend scientific understandings of biological plasticity, constituting ethical and creative sites of exploration.

Edith Szanto, "Twelver Shi'i Self-flagellation Rites in Contemporary Syria: Mourning Sayyida Zaynab" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

Edith Szanto’s Twelver Shi'i Self-Flagellation Rites in Contemporary Syria: Mourning Sayyida Zaynab  [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781399548281](Edinburgh UP, 2025) is a striking and deeply immersive ethnographic study that takes the reader into the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab in Syria. This town was a vibrant center of Shi‘i life, pilgrimage, and healing, especially for Iraqi refugees until the 2011 Syrian uprising. By combining meticulous fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2010 with rich historical and social context, Szanto shows how these contested rituals served as both spiritual expression and pathways to worldly and psychological healing. The book examines controversial Muharram practices, especially self-flagellation, not simply as ritual acts but as deeply meaningful responses to trauma, displacement, and the search for justice and healing. In doing so, Szanto pays close attention to how people actually live their religion: through relationships with saints, engagement with religious authorities, media, ritual performance, and forms of spiritual healing. In this conversation, Szanto and I explore specific Muharram practices, including self-flagellation, the wedding of Qasim, and other ritualized forms of mourning, as well as gendered dynamics in who participates and why. We discuss what these practices looked like on the ground—what Muharram in Sayyida Zaynab felt like, how different communities understood and debated these rituals, and what purposes they served for those who participated in them. We talk about the Zaynabiyya seminary and how changes in its physical and institutional structure reshaped how knowledge was taught and who held authority. We also discuss relationships with saints, spiritual healers like Shaykh Abu Ahmad, and the ways that media, music, and ritual performance mediate piety. Szanto also treats us to reflecting on some of her experiences observing and engaging with these rituals. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Islamic studies generally, Shi‘i studies, Middle Eastern religious life, or the ways that communities navigate devotion, trauma, and healing through ritual.

Leslie Barnes, "Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

In Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781399532884] (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Leslie Barnes examines the ambivalences that mark Southeast Asian sex industries under global imperialism. She explores the multi-layered subjectivities of sex workers, procurers and clients, and interrogates the frameworks in which discourses surrounding sex work circulate. Engaged with debates concerning the status of transactional sex, Sex Work in Southeast Asia explores the symbolic force and concrete conditions of sex work in Cambodia and Vietnam, considering how these debates and the figures they ensnare are mediated by fiction and creative nonfiction. The book’s scenes of ambivalence show how the aesthetic treatment of sex work stretches the paradigms we use to make sense not only of sex work, but also of art, the evidentiary status of testimony and the spectacles of pleasure and suffering. Contesting essentialism and authenticity, and working to suspend judgement, these scenes encourage a re-examination of what we think we know about sex work, how we know it and what we do with that knowledge. Leslie Barnes is an Associate Professor of French Studies at the Australian National University. She is author of Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature (2014) and co-editor of The Cinema of Rithy Panh: Everything Has a Soul [https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-cinema-of-rithy-panh#entry:106725@1:url] (2021). We previously chatted on New Books about her work on the great Cambodian film director Rithy Panh, so was excited to speak with her again about Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film.

Emotions of LGBT Rights

In this episode of High Theory, Saronik talks to Senthorun Raj about the Emotions of LGBT Rights. Emotions from disgust and fear to love and joy shape the legal frameworks that attempt to govern human sexual behavior around the world. Sen cautions against dividing emotions into good and bad, but instead asks us to take a critical stance on all emotions, to understand how they shape our policies. In the episode, we talk about Sara Ahmed, the Stonewall Riots, conversion therapy, and efforts to mandate for and against inclusive sex education. The transcript lives here as a WordDoc [http://hightheory.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Emotions-of-LGBT-Rights-Transcript.docx] and here as a PDF [http://hightheory.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Emotions-of-LGBT-Rights-Transcript.pdf]. Sen’s book, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law [https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-emotions-of-lgbt-rights-and-reforms.html] (Edinburgh University Press 2025) uses emotion as a novel analytic lens to understand, analyse, and critique the relationship between individual, interpersonal, and institutional conflicts over LGBT rights. Emotions are central to the pursuit, organisation, and contestation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in law. Drawing from critical legal theories, this book cultivates the concept of “emotional grammar” to show how emotions structure law reform pursuits by threading together Hansard, legislation, case law, law reform consultations, and statutory guidance. By doing so, it explains why addressing this emotional grammar is important for scholars, lawyers, judges, legislators, and activists seeking to navigate conflicts over LGBT rights and reforms that aim to repair the inequalities faced by LGBT people. Senthorun Raj [https://www.mmu.ac.uk/staff/profile/dr-senthorun-raj#t-tabs_staff_profile-0] is an academic human rights lawyer with expertise in issues of race, gender, sexuality, and culture. He works as a Reader in Human Rights Law at Manchester Metropolitan University. Sen’s research and teaching interests include LGBTIQ+ rights, emotion, culture, equalities and human rights law, legal education, and critical legal theory. His latest monograph,  [https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-emotions-of-lgbt-rights-and-reforms.html]builds on his previous book,  [https://www.routledge.com/Feeling-Queer-Jurisprudence-Injury-Intimacy-Identity/Raj/p/book/9781032137513]Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury, Intimacy, Identity [https://www.routledge.com/Feeling-Queer-Jurisprudence-Injury-Intimacy-Identity/Raj/p/book/9781032137513] (Routledge, 2020), which explored the ways emotions shape legal judgments that enable progress for LGBT people. He is also the co-editor of The Queer Outside in Law: Recognising LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom [https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-48830-7] (Palgrave, 2020) and  [https://counterpress.org.uk/publications/queer-judgments/]Queer Judgments [https://counterpress.org.uk/publications/queer-judgments/] (Counterpress, 2025). The image for this episode is a coloured lithograph, from 1868, depicting a double rainbow, by René Henri Digeon after Étienne Antoine Eugène Ronjat. It was sourced by Lili Epstein for High Theory from the Wellcome Collection [https://wellcomecollection.org/works/d8zdj7jx?wellcomeImagesUrl=/indexplus/image/V0025069.html].

Hans A. Harmakaputra, "Christian-Muslim Relations in Post-Reformation Indonesia: Resistance, Identity and Belonging" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)

The post-Reformation era has witnessed a vastly changing landscape in Indonesian Islam, particularly with the emergence of conservative Muslim voices. Christian-Muslim Relations in Post-Reformation Indonesia: Resistance, Identity and Belonging [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781399523950] (Edinburgh UP, 2026) explores several strategies of Christian resistance against the resurgence of conservative voices in Indonesian Islam to establish a coherent view of Christian responses and a greater understanding of Christian-Muslim relations after the Reformation in 1998. These different strategies demonstrate that, despite their status as a religious minority, Indonesian Christians are far from passive and submissive. Instead, they actively negotiate their identity and role in contemporary Indonesia’s shifting political and social context to cultivate a sense of belonging.