Religion, Politics, and the Postcolonial.
Food, Fasting, and Famine.

It's all there in these new books!

St John, Ian. Gladstone and the Logic of Victorian Politics. London: Anthem Press, 2010.

'In this lucid, clearly-organised and engaging study, Ian St John explores the intellectual convictions, religious beliefs and powerful impulses which shaped the complex temperament and extraordinary career of William Gladstone, the dominating political presence of 19th century Britain. Drawing on the latest research, St John presents a convincing and compelling portrait of the Victorian statesman who defined the aspirations and anxieties of his age, thereby providing a valuable and timely guide for all students of the period.' - Dr Angus Hawkins, Director, Public & International Programmes, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford.

Stevens, Jennifer. The Historical Jesus and the Literary Imagination, 1860-1920. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010.

Fictional reconstructions of the Gospels continue to find a place in contemporary literature and in the popular imagination. Present day writers of New Testament fiction and drama are usually considered as part of a tradition formed by mid-to-late-twentieth-century authors such as Robert Graves, Nikos Kazantzakis and Anthony Burgess. This book looks back further to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, when the templates of the majority of today's Gospel fictions and dramas were set down. In doing so, it examines the extent to which significant works of biblical scholarship both influenced and inspired literary works.

Focusing on writers such as Oscar Wilde, George Moore and Marie Corelli, this timely new addition to the English Association Monographs series will be essential reading for scholars working at the intersection of literature and theology.

Banerjee, Sukanya. Becoming Imperial Citizens: Indians in the Late-Victorian Empire. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 20I0.

In this remarkable account of imperial citizenship, Sukanya Banerjee investigates the ways that Indians formulated notions of citizenship in the British Empire from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth.

"Becoming Imperial Citizens is a virtuoso performance. It is written with verve, confidence, and elegance, and it is based on immense scholarship. Sukanya Banerjee's exploration of an elite native Indian politics that preceded the anticolonial nationalist movement shows how citizenship can be (and has been) located outside the frame of the (free) nation. This compelling and important argument is bound to affect thinking in many fields, including political theory, colonial history, and postcolonial and feminist studies."- Rajeswari Sunder Rajan.

Wheeler-Barclay, Marjorie. The Science of Religion in Britain, i860-1915. Charlottesville & London: University of Virginia Press, 2010. Distributed in Canada by Scholarly Book Services.

In The Science of Religion in Britain, 1860-1915, Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay argues that, although the existence and significance of the science of religion has been barely visible to modern scholars of the Victorian period, it was a subject of lively and extensive debate among nineteenth-century readers and audiences.

"The Science of Religion in Britain, 1860-1915 is a major contribution to the history of ideas, the history of religion, and British history. It is a revisionist work in the best sense, in that it uses the principles of classification and textual analysis to bring into focus an important historical phenomenon that has to date been treated only in a fragmentary way. Wheeler-Barclay has succeeded in defining `the science of religion' and put each of its practitioners into an entirely new light. It is a considerable achievement." - Jeffrey Cox, University of Iowa.

Roy, Parama. Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2010.

In Alimentary Tracts, Parama Roy argues that who eats and with whom, who starves, and what is rejected as food are questions fundamental to empire, decolonization, and globalization. In crucial ways, she suggests, colonialism reconfigured the sensorium of colonizer and colonized, generating novel experiences of desire, taste, and appetite as well as new technologies of the embodied self.

"This splendid book uses ideas about food, fasting, and famine to explore the Indian colonial sensorium in a truly original manner. It should be ofgreat interest to historians of colonialism, of cuisine, and of the affective practices through which the colony-and the postcolony-produce their effects. It is beautifully and forcefully written, thus itself a sensory bonus for the reader." - Arjun Appadurai, New York University.

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