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

  • Bacon, Eugen, editor. Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction. Bloomsbury Publishing, Nov. 2024.
  • Behluli, Sofie. Art in Contemporary Anglo-American Fiction: The Ekphrastic Novel. Oxford UP, Aug. 2025.
  • Breton, Justine. Power and Society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: Building Fantasy Civilization. Bloomsbury Publishing, April 2025.
  • Calhoun, Doyle D. The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire. Duke UP, Oct. 2024.
  • 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.
  • D’Souza Radha and Sunera Thobani. Decolonizing Knowledge: Looking Back, Moving Forward. Bloomsbury Publishing, June 2025.
  • Giblett, Rod. Walking to Nature with Thoreau and Benjamin: Or, Psychopolitical Ecology. Bloomsbury 2025, May 2025. 
  • Fine, Kerry, et al., editors. Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western. University of Nebraska Press, Jan. 2025.
  • Heywood, Sophie. Children’s Publishing in Cold War France: Hachette in the Age of Surveillance and Control. Bloomsbury Publishing, Feb. 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.
  • Jordan, Nicolle. Prolific Ground: Landscape and British Women’s Writing, 1690-1790. Bucknell University Press, Nov. 2024.
  • 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.
  • Malamud, Randy. CRASH! Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec. 2024.
  • McGuire, Riley. Dysfluent in Fiction: Vocal Disability in Nineteenth-Century Literature. The Ohio State University Press, April 2025.
  • Mehta, Brinda J. The Wounds of War and Conflict in Contemporary Arab Women's Writings from North Africa and the Middle East. Oxford UP, Aug. 2025.
  • Morgan, Alaina M. Atlantic Crescent: Building Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora. University of North Carolina Press, July 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.
  • Schrock, Chad. Chaucer and the Invention of Biblical Narrative. Bloomsbury Publishing, Oct. 2024.
  • Spencer, Amy, editor. Ambient Stories in Practice and Research. Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec. 2024.
  • Stead, Evanghelia. Grotesque and Performance in the Art of Aubrey Beardsley. Open Book Publishers, Oct. 2024.
  • 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.
  • Wheatly, Kim. John Cowper Powys and the Afterlife of Romanticism: Re-imagining William Wordsworth and John Keats. Bloomsbury Publishing, Feb. 2025.
  • Wilson, Lucas F. W., At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives. Rutgers University Press, March 2025.
  • Zaragoza-De León, Jeanette. Interpreting the Amistad Trials: How Interpreters and Translators Make and Shape History. Bloomsbury Publishing, Feb. 2025.