Book Reviews

Members of the MMLA are encouraged to submit book reviews which, if accepted, will be published in the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association (JMMLA).  Strong book reviews help scholars keep abreast of the state of scholarship in their own and other fields, and they guide researchers in choosing books relevant to their scholarship.

Eligibility

The JMMLA does not consider for publication book reviews that are submitted by undergraduates.  Contributors to the Journal must be pursuing or hold a graduate degree and are required to hold an active MMLA membership at the time of publication (not of submission).  Lastly, only one book review from a single scholar may be under consideration at a time.  Scholars who have published a book review with the JMMLA previously are invited to submit another at a later date if they are interested in doing so.

If you would like to review a book that would be of interest to our members, please inform us by email at [email protected], and attach a copy of your current CV.  

Guidelines and Models

To assist members in composing strong book reviews, we offer the following guidelines and models:

I.  Guidelines

An effective book review should:

  • Distill the essence of the book’s argument, identifying the critical debates in which it intervenes, the analytical problems it addresses, the key assertions or claims it makes, and the methods and materials it uses to support those claims. 
  • Describe how the book’s parts support its key claims, and evaluate whether that support is convincing.   
  • Identify the scholarly audiences who would benefit from reading this book, and situate the book's argument in relation to other works in that field of scholarship. 
  • Specify how researchers will benefit from this book, referencing the book’s own account of that benefit, and supplementing or challenging that account as appropriate.
  • Accomplish the above in not more than 1200 words.

II.  Models

Those seeking models to emulate when composing a book review are invited to consult the following:

Selecting a Book to Review

Recent books that you are reading for exam preparation, dissertation research, or other scholarly projects are all excellent candidates to review.  Please Note: To keep our reviews timely, we only publish reviews of books published within the last year-and-a-half. The MMLA maintains a list of books available for review (see below), but members need not limit themselves to these titles. If you wish to review a book that is not listed below, we can request that the book's publisher supply you with a review copy.

Books Published in 2024 and 2025

  • Auerbach, Amanda. Getting Lost in the Novel: Strategic Confusion in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Fiction. Cambridge University Press, July 2025.  
  • Barter, Faith. Black Pro Se: Authorship and the Limits of Law in Nineteenth Century African American Literature. University of North Carolina Press, March 2025.
  • Bauer, Gero. Hope and Kinship in Contemporary Fiction: Moods and Modes of Temporality and Belonging. Bloomsbury Publishing, Aug. 2025.
  • Behluli, Sofie. Art in Contemporary Anglo-American Fiction: The Ekphrastic Novel. Oxford University Press, Aug. 2025.
  • Breton, Justine. Power and Society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: Building Fantasy Civilization. Bloomsbury Publishing, April 2025.
  • Buttes, Stephen. Poverty and Antitheatricality: Form and Formlessness in Latin American Literature, Art, and Theory. Rutgers University Press, June 2025.
  • Careless, Eleanor. Incarceration in the Poetry of Anna Mendelssohn: Serve Your Own Sentences. Bloomsbury Publishing, Feb. 2025.
  • Chapman, Michael. Literary Transactions in South Africa: A Politics of Interpretation. Bloomsbury Publishing, Jan. 2025.
  • Craig, Heidi. Theatre Closer and the Paradoxical Rise of English Renaissance Drama in the Civil Wars. Cambridge University Press, Aug. 2025.
  • Cuming, Emily. Maritime Relations: Life, Labor and Literature at the Water's Edge, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press, Aug. 2025.
  • Demson, Michael, et al., editors. Romantic Beasts: Pervasion, Eccentricity, Exhibition. Bucknell University Press, Aug. 2025.
  • Dharwadker, Aparna Bhargava. Cosmo-Modernism and Theatre in India: Writing and Staging Multilingual Modernisms. Columbia University Press, Aug. 2025.
  • Driessen, et al., editors. Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict, and Complicity in Fandom. The University of Iowa Press, June 2025.
  • D’Souza Radha and Sunera Thobani. Decolonizing Knowledge: Looking Back, Moving Forward. Bloomsbury Publishing, June 2025.
  • Fine, Kerry, et al., editors. Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western. University of Nebraska Press, Jan. 2025.
  • Gallien, Claire. Reconfiguring and Approaching Arabic, Persian, and Indic Literary Traditions in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Britain: Orientalism and the Recreation of the Islamicate Canon. Oxford University Press, April 2025.
  • Gil'Adí, Maia. Doom Patterns: Latinx Speculations and the Aesthetics of Violence. Duke University Press, Jan. 2025.
  • Hauhart, Robert C., et al., editors. American Modernism (Re) Considered. Bloomsbury Publishing, Sept. 2025.
  • Hill, Pamela Smith. Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Books. University of Nebraska Press, July 2025.
  • Hogan, Patrick Colm. Colonialism and Literature: An Affective Narratology. University of Nebraska Press, Jan. 2025.
  • Jenkin-Smith, Daniel. The Rise of Office Literature: Bureaucratization and Aesthetics in Britain and France, 1810-1900. Bloomsbury Publishing, March 2025.
  • Kaiser, Birgit M. Hélène Cixous’s Poetics of Voice. Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec. 2024.
  • Kamper, David. Rezballers and Skate Elders: Joyful Futures in Indian Country. University of Nebraska Press, June 2025.
  • Lemercier-Goddard, Sophie, et al., editors. Closet Drama in Early Modern England. Bloomsbury Publishing, Aug. 2025.
  • Libow, Jess. Vigorous Reforms: Women Writers and the Politics of Health in the Nineteenth-Century United States. University of North Carolina Press, Sept. 2025.
  • Make, Jennifer Boum. Decolonial Care: Reimagining Caregiving in the French Caribbean. Rutgers University Press, July 2025.
  • McGuire, Riley. Dysfluent in Fiction: Vocal Disability in Nineteenth-Century Literature. The Ohio State University Press, April 2025.
  • Medieros, Paulo de, editor. The Hypercontemporary Novel in Portugal: Fiction Aesthetics and Memory After Postmodernism. Bloomsbury Publishing, Aug. 2025.
  • Mehta, Brinda J. The Wounds of War and Conflict in Contemporary Arab Women's Writings from North Africa and the Middle East. Oxford University Press, Aug. 2025.
  • Morgan, Alaina M. Atlantic Crescent: Building Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora. University of North Carolina Press, July 2025.
  • Noonan, Patrick. Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan. Columbia University Press, Aug. 2025.
  • Parvulescu, Anca. Face and Form: Physiognomy in Literary Modernism. Cambridge University Press, Aug. 2025.
  • Roxburgh, Natalie. The Politics of Disinterestedness in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Browning, Eliot, Wilde. Bloomsbury Publishing, May 2025.
  • Sandberg, Julianne. Early Modern Literature and the Bodies of a Reformed Eucharist. Bloomsbury Publishing, Jan. 2025.
  • Shohet, Lauren, et al., editors. Queering Early Modern Death in England: Figuration, Representation, and Matter. Bloomsbury Publishing, Aug. 2025
  • Spencer, Amy, editor. Ambient Stories in Practice and Research. Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec. 2024.
  • Stern, Michael. Thinking Nietzsche with Africana Thought: Towards an Alluvial Poetics of Worlding. Bloomsbury Publishing, Sept. 2025.
  • Von Kunes, Karen, editor. Milan Kundera Known and Unknown. Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec. 2024.
  • Wainwright, Anna. Widow City: Gender, Emotion, and Community in the Italian Renaissance. University of Delaware Press, May 2025.
  • Webster, Amy. Serialization, Commercialization and the Children’s Classics. Bloomsbury Publishing, Jan. 2025.
  • Weinberger, Christopher. Imaginary Worlds and Real Ethics in Japanese Fiction: Case Studies in Novel Reflexivity. Bloomsbury Publishing, Aug. 2025.