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 Resources

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

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.  Resources

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

  • Book reviews published in prior issues of JMMLA, which are accessible to MMLA members when they are logged in to their accounts on this website; after logging in, go to the "Journal" menu and select the final item, "Issues of JMMLA," to browse recent book reviews. Alternatively, access back issues of JMMLA through JSTOR.
  • The many scholarly book reviews available online at “The ALH Review,” the book review website of American Literary History. 
  • Advice to reviewers provided in Steven E. Gump's How to Review Scholarly Books: Reading, Writing, Relishing.

Selecting a Book to Review

Recently published 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.

Recently Published Books for Your Consideration

  • Agran, Edward Gale. Sinclair Lewis: The 1920s and the Shaping of American Identity. Mercer UP, Dec. 2025.
  • AlAmmouri, Bayan. Refugees and Technology in Contemporary Anglophone Literature: Techfugees' Technological Erasure. Bloomsbury, Sept. 2026.
  • Alon, Shir. Static Forms: Writing the Present in the Modern Middle East. Columbia UP, Oct. 2025.
  • Bealer, Tracy. Girl Detectices and Gothic Femininity: Megan Abbott's Major Novels. Bloomsbury, Aug. 2026.
  • Boffone, Trevor, et al. Yassified Shakespeare: Gender Performance and Critical ShaxDrag. Bloomsbury, Oct. 2026.
  • Brouillette, Sarah. Content Machines: Reading and Writing in the Platform Era. Duke UP, Oct. 2026.
  • Butler-Way, Emma. The Corset in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Fiction: Unlacing the Past. Bloomsbury, Oct. 2026.
  • Caldwell, William Casey. Urban Citizenship in Early Modern Drama: Politics, Commerce, and the City. Bloomsbury, Oct. 2026.
  • Cartwright, Penny. Irony, Agency and the Global Imaginary in Post-2000 Nigerian and Kenyan Literature. Bloomsbury, Feb. 2026.
  • Castelli, Alberto. Love, Despair, and Modernism in Literature: Among the Victorians and Modernists. Routledge, Mar. 2026.
  • Cheung-Miaw, Calvin. Radical Subject: Third Worldism and the Politics of Race in Asian American Studies, 1968–2000. Duke UP, Aug. 2027.
  • Chiara Thumiger, et al. Horror in Classical Antiquity and Beyond: Body, Affect, Concepts. Bloomsbury, Sept. 2026.
  • Detwyler, Anatoly. Seeing Through Abstraction: Literary Encounters with Information in Modern China. Columbia UP, Oct. 2025.
  • Ditter, Julia. Scottish Literature, Borders and the Environmental Imagination. Bloomsbury, June 2026.
  • Edoro, Ainehi. Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think. Columbia UP, Jan. 2026.
  • Effe, Alexandra. A History of Autofiction: Cognitive and Cultural Work from 18th Century England to Contemporary Global Anglophone Literatures. Bloomsbury, Oct. 2025.
  • Ezenwafor-Afuecheta, Chikelu I., Grammar of Etulo: A Niger-Congo (Idomoid) Language. Open Book Publishers, Oct. 2025.
  • Fehskens, Matthew. Poetics of Prophecy and Planetary Hispanic Modernism: The tragic Aesthetic of the Vates Poets. Bloomsbury, Oct. 2025.
  • Francis, Marc. Curating Deviance: Programming the Queer Film Canon. Duke UP, Feb. 2026.
  • Ganti, Tejaswini. Thinking in English, Speaking in Hindi: Translation, Creativity, and Value in Bollywood and Beyond. Duke UP, Feb. 2027.
  • Gavaler, Chris. The Color of Paper: Representing Race in the Comics Medium. Ohio State P, Feb. 2026.
  • Harel, Naama. The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast: Gender and Animality in Modernist HebrewFiction. Rutgers UP, Nov. 2025. 
  • Huang, Michelle N. Racial Beings: Experiments in Asian American New Materialisms. Duke UP, Mar. 2026.
  • Hunziker, Alyssa A. Histories in Common: Native American Literatures, Extra Archives, and the Indigenous Transpacific. U of North Carolina P, April 2026. 
  • Ioanes, Anna. Painful Forms: Aesthetic Violence in American Literature and Art,1945-2001. U of North Carolina P, Oct. 2025.
  • Jokschus, Max. The Post-Internet Horror Film: Devils in the Data. Bloomsbury, Oct. 2026.
  • Kappeler, Erin Joyce. The Enclosures of Free Verse: Racializing Poetic Form in the Modernist Era. U of North Carolina P, Feb. 2026.
  • Labenski, Amelia. Canine Death in Canonical American Fiction. Bloomsbury, Oct. 2026.
  • Manchanda, Mokshda. Comics, Self, and Trauma: Examining Autobiographical Graphic Narratives by Women Writers. Bloomsbury, Aug. 2026.
  • Mann, Justin L. Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculative Fiction. Duke UP, Mar. 2026.
  • Marsh, Wendell H., Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities. Columbia UP, Oct. 2025.
  • McFarland, Lois W. Creation and Apocalypse in Feminist Speculative Fiction. Bloomsbury, Aug. 2026.
  • McLarney, Ellen. Black Art, Black Muslims: Islam in the Black Freedom Struggle. Columbia UP, Mar 2026. 
  • Mesle, Sarah. Reasons and Feelings: Writing for the Humanities Now. U of Chicago P, Oct. 2025.
  • Milliman, Paul. A Cultural History of Leisure in the Medieval Age. Bloomsbury, June 2026.
  • Noe, Marcia. The Innocent Midwest: Culture, Region, and Identity, 1793–1930. Ohio UP, Feb. 2026.
  • Oliver, Matthew. Reading Length in Fantasy Fiction. Bloomsbury, Mar 2026.
  • Pelavski, Andrés. Impaired Consciousness in Ancient Medical Texts. Cambridge UP, Dec. 2025.
  • Rambsy II, Howard, and Kenton Rambsy. One Black Writer at a Time: How Literary Coverage Shapes Reception. Bloomsbury, Aug. 2026.
  • Reed, Julie L. Land, Language, and Women: A Cherokee and American Educational History. U of North Carolina P, Jan. 2026.
  • Rudnytsky, Peter L. Psychoanalysis and the Patriarchal Tradition: Augustine to Milton. Bloomsbury, Oct. 2025.
  • Scappettone, Jennifer. Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism. Columbia UP, Oct. 2025.
  • Schöberlein, Stefan and Turpin, Zachary. Whitman's Southern Sojourn: Rediscovering the Poet in New Orleans, 1848. U of Iowa P, Dec. 2025
  • Sheikh, Sheheryar. The Post-9/11 Great American Novel: Fictional Perpetuations of White American Trauma and Islamophobia. Bloomsbury, Oct. 2025.
  • Shohet, Lauren, et al. Queering Early Modern Death in England: Figuration, Representation, and Matter. Bloomsbury, Aug. 2025.
  • Simonetti, Nicola. Neurodiversity and the Contemporary in the 21st-Century Novel. Bloomsbury, Sept. 2026.
  • St. Clair, Robert. Counter-Modernities in Nineteenth-Century French Literature: Constellations of Loss in Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Flaubert. Oxford UP, Oct. 2025.
  • Tandeciarz, Sivlia R. Citizens of Memory: Affect, Representation, and Human Rights in Postdictatorship Argentina. Bucknell UP, Dec. 2025.
  • Tsai, Addie. Straight White Men Can't Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture. Bloomsbury, Aug. 2025.
  • Winkiel, Laura. Modernism and the Middle Passage. Columbia UP, Oct. 2025.
  • Winston, Leslie. Intersex Figures in Modern Japanese Literature and Art. U of Michigan P, Oct. 2025.
  • Woods, Tryon P. The Cinema of Social Death: Blackhood At-Large. Bloomsbury, Dec. 2025.