Following up on my message from last month (copied below, in case you missed it before): that generated a flurry of additional suggestions as well as claims by prospective reviewers, so I thought it might be good to update the list now.  In the future I expect to post new listings of books of interest no more often than a few times a year—I don’t want to overload the listserv!

Here’s the original message:

I am pleased to announce that I am taking over as Book Review Editor for Configurations from Jeff Karnicky, and first ask you to join me in thanking Jeff for his tremendous service in that role over the last decade.

We typically publish around 10-12 reviews per year, of books--on any topic--that are likely to interest a wide cross-section of SLSA members and Configurations readers.  If you wish to propose a book for review, please email me the author/title/publisher, a very brief description and statement of why it merits being reviewed in Configurations, and whether you would like to do the review yourself or, if not, any suggestions you may have for appropriate reviewers.  Authors are welcome to propose their own recent book for review, with the same info.

In addition, we regularly receive requests for reviews from publishers.  Periodically (probably around twice a year) I will post a list of candidates on litsci-l and also on the SLSA website at https://litsciarts.org/books-to-review/, and ask anyone interested in reviewing one of them to respond.  The first such list may be found below.  

You may look at (just about) any issue of Configurations to get an idea of the preferred length and style for reviews.  Once a reviewer has been matched up with a book, I will ask for submission of the review within four months or so; publication can usually be expected within one or two issues following receipt.

I greatly look forward to working with the SLSA community to ensure a steady stream of important and engaging reviews in Configurations.  Please let me hear from you soon!

and here’s the updated list:

Nestwork: New Material Rhetorics for Precarious Species by Jennifer Clary-Lemon (PSU Press)  https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09543-1.html

Virgin Mary and the Neutrino: Reality in Trouble by Isabelle Stengers, translated by Andrew Goffey (Duke University Press) https://www.dukeupress.edu/virgin-mary-and-the-neutrino

 Echo by Amit Pinchevski (MIT Press) https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262543408/echo/

Glass Scenographies. Notes on Spaces of One’s Own by Szilvia Gellai (M BOOKS, Weimar) https://www.m-books.eu/store/glass-scenographies/

The Plastic Turn by Ranjan Ghosh (Cornell University Press) https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501766978/the-plastic-turn/ 

The Human Figure on Film by Seth Barry Watter (SUNY Press) https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Human-Figure-on-Film

Oil Fictions: World Literature and Our Contemporary Petrosphere Edited by Stacey Balkan and Swaralipi Nandi (Penn State Anthroposcene series) https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09158-7.html

Fear and Nature: Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene Edited by Christy Tidwell and Carter Soles (Penn State Anthroposcene series) https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09021-4.html

On Making in the Digital Humanities: The Scholarship of Digital Humanities Development in Honour of John Bradley Edited by Julianne Nyhan, Geoffrey Rockwell, Stéfan Sinclair, and Alexandra Ortolja-Baird (UCL Press) https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/O/bo208645506.html

The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in British Children's Literature, 1762–1860 by Elizabeth Massa Hoiem (U. Mass Press) https://www.umasspress.com/9781625347558/the-education-of-things/

How We Became Sensorimotor: Movement, Measurement, Sensation by Mark Peterson (U Minnesota Press) https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/how-we-became-sensorimotor

Scale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry by Joshua DiCaglio (U Minnesota Press) https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/scale-theory

The Digital and its Discontents by Aden Evans  (U Minnesota Press) https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-digital-and-its-discontents

Jay Labinger
Beckman Institute
California Institute of Technology
139-74
Pasadena, CA 91125
tel: 626-395-6520
fax: 626-449-4159