ABSTRACT This review essay examines Stephen Legg’s Spaces of Anticolonialism, focusing specifically on the book’s engagement with the Political Underground. Before discussing the book’s central contributions, it begins by laying out conceptual considerations for what it introduces as the Political Underground. Legg’s spatialisation of the Political Underground and his conceptualisation of Quit India’s underground movement as both subject and agent of anticolonial governmentalities are then presented as the book’s central contributions. The discussion also considers Legg’s methodological strategies for retrieving Delhi’s anticolonial archive, before closing with reflections on style, conceptual richness, and the book’s potential to inspire further research on underground and anticolonial geographies in India and beyond.

How Appalachia Became Appalachia: A Review Essay Appalachia as Contested Borderland of the Early Modern Atlantic, 1528–1715 by Kimberly C. Borchard (review)

ABSTRACT This essay reviews recent treatments of time and temporality in Romantic literary studies. The essay first tracks how critics' operative conceptions of time—and the Romantic conceptions of time they focus on—have changed over the last few decades as critical methods have changed and observes that critics have increasingly analyzed the central social and intellectual tensions of the Romantic period in terms of the interactions among multiple temporalities. The second section considers critical studies not only of literary treatments of time but also of the temporality of reading literature. The essay concludes with a proposal that time spent reading has a texture similar to time spent in the company of another person.

This is a review essay of Carolyn Culbertson’s recent book Gadamer and the Social Trun in Epistemology (SUNY Press, 2024).

This review essay does a critical appraisal of the recent poetry anthology Zonel by H.M. Pernal. The essay argues that while HM’s poetry has evolved over the years, his metaphoric acumen has faded largely due to a conscious decision to write what he claims to ‘dark’ poetry. While dark poetry has its place, it needs to emerge naturally from the overwhelming emotions of the poet and not out of compulsion. Some poems in the anthology do bear witness to dark developments around the world and the country. However, the poet has explored a different poetic terrain that can leave the readers of his earlier poetry much disappointed.

In an era of technological acceleration, clinical evaluation is increasingly governed by digital diagnostics, algorithmic protocols and standardised efficiency. While these advances improve precision, they risk reducing the clinical encounter to an impersonal transaction-undermining the clinician's role as an ethical witness to suffering. This review essay proposes the concept of sacred attention as a necessary complement to the biomedical gaze: a cultivated, ethically attuned mode of presence that reclaims the human depth of clinical care.Drawing on the Indian literary and philosophical traditions of Rabindranath Tagore and Adi Shankaracharya, we reframe clinical empathy not as an affective impulse but as a contemplative practice. Tagore's vision of ananda dhara (the eternal stream of bliss) evokes a poetic theology of dignity, inviting clinicians to perceive the sacred within the mundane. Shankaracharya's affirmation chidananda rupah shivoham ('I am of the nature of blissful consciousness') offers a non-dualist ontology that critiques hierarchical detachment and affirms relational reciprocity in care.This framework has specific clinical and pedagogical relevance. We explore how sacred attention can recontextualise the physical examination as an embodied ritual, transforming it from procedural touch to ethical presence. We also examine how medical education can integrate literary-philosophical traditions to cultivate inner stillness, reflective awareness and relational depth in future physicians.By positioning sacred attention as a pedagogy of perception, this essay contributes to the medical humanities discourse on empathy, presence and rehumanised care. Healing, we argue, requires not only technical knowledge-but the moral clarity to truly see.

Abstract At one point in Gary Jaworski’s important study Erving Goffman and the Cold War he criticizes the “marginal man trope” surrounding Goffman; the notion of him as a scholar unconnected to his time and place. In this review essay I adopt this term more broadly as a means of highlighting the book’s contribution. This can be seen positively in how it draws our attention to the three factors of cold war experience, culture and Goffman’s “natural metaphors.”, providing new ways of viewing Goffman’s sociological project. Further critiques of the marginal man trope could explore how Goffman’s citizenship and ethnicity complicated his place in the Cold War U.S. From here, inspired by the prominence Jaworski has given to Goffman’s Strategic Interaction , I question to what extent the marginal man trope has been encouraged by the canonization of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life . I conclude by suggesting the ways in which Erving Goffman and the Cold War might offer inspiration to scholars, who, like many in Goffman’s time, today find themselves battling attacks on their institutions and scholarship.

Abstract This review essay critically examines Stuart Gray’s reading of the Bhagavad Gītā in his work The Political Theory of the Bhagavad-Gītā: Deep Ideology, Nationalism, and Democratic Life on the Indian Subcontinent . It explores how Gray situates the Gītā within a broader comparative political theory, arguing that Hindu nationalism reconfigures the text to legitimize a political vision rooted in mythic pasts and divine action. The review interrogates Gray’s claim that the Gītā functions as a philosophical site for political modernity and cultural authority, often aligned with exclusionary ideologies. While acknowledging the originality of Gray’s analysis, this essay also reflects on the limitations of framing the Gītā within Western paradigms, urging more grounded approaches to Indian political texts and their contemporary receptions.

A detailed review of Laurence Lampert’s Beijing Lectures on Leo Strauss, Plato, and Nietzsche (delivered in 2015) highlights how the book distills a lifetime of Lampert’s scholarship (1941–2024) on the trio. His earlier works—imaginative, meticulous, and elegantly written though often lengthy—are here rendered in a more accessible form: tightly focused, architecturally clear, syntactically simple, and without footnotes. My review therefore provides citations for the many sources Lampert draws on. Subtitled “Philosophy and Its Poetry,” the lectures argue that all three thinkers depict great philosophers as moving from rigorous ontological inquiry to crafting political-theological teachings that harmonize with reality. Lampert relies on Strauss’s recovery of the multilayered, sometimes secretive “art of writing” used by Plato and others to navigate their societies and advance future-oriented aims. While summarizing the chapters on each author, my review adds context, raises a few objections, and considers the book’s implications for elevating readers and informing philanthropic efforts, especially in environmentalism.

This review essay examines four recent titles that deal with esoteric Buddhism in medieval Japan: <em>Kamakura Bukkyō: Mikkyō no shiten kara</em> (Daizō Shuppan, 2023); <em>Rituals of Initiation and Consecration in Premodern Japan: Power and Legitimacy in Kingship, Religion, and the Arts</em> (De Gruyter, 2022); <em>Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism</em> (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2023); and <em>Esoteric Zen: Zen and the Tantric Teachings in Premodern Japan</em> (Brill, 2023). They all helpfully challenge sectarian narratives by showing how esoteric Buddhism permeated various medieval schools. In doing so, these works build upon Kuroda Toshio’s idea of a hegemonic exoteric-esoteric system (<em>kenmitsu taisei</em>), a concept now fifty years old. While Kuroda’s ongoing influence on recent scholarship, including the volumes under review, has been a net positive for the field, my essay raises questions about the definition and coherence of the term “esoteric Buddhism.” It also encourages future scholars to examine other non-esoteric aspects of medieval Japanese religions.

In 2021, Ken McNatty, Danielle Monniaux, and I published a review essay illustrating how ovarian folliculogenesis can sometimes be bizarre, amazing, or even almost incomprehensible. Examples included the mechanisms underlying intra- and inter-species differences in ovulation rates; the possibility of awakening human primordial follicles in vitro, maturing and fertilising them to produce viable offspring; and a model in which inactivation of a single oocyte gene results in sterile mice with follicular growth blocked at the primary stage but normal steroid cyclicity maintained [1]. The aim of this second essay is to present further examples of the extraordinary diversity of ovarian function across animal species and, where possible, to propose hypotheses that may explain them. These concern: the presence of oogonial stem cells in the ovaries of invertebrates and non-mammalian vertebrates, and their very probable absence in mammals;the many and varied strategies of ovarian development and oogenesis in teleosts;the metabolic dialogue between cumulus cells and oocytes across mammalian species;the presence of numerous germline genes, specifically or even exclusively expressed in the mammalian oocyte, whose invalidation has no phenotypic consequence on fertility in the mouse;the unique features of ovarian function in the dog, particularly the frequent presence of polyovular follicles and the distinctive mode of post-ovulatory oocyte maturation; andthe absence of an intra-ovarian dominance factor in mono-ovulating species, disproving an old hypothesis: the selection of a single follicle is instead due to a succession of negative and then positive feedback between follicles and the hypothalamic-pituitary axis. This essay is also a final tribute to Ken McNatty, who liked to say that the ovary could be crazy.

This book review essay explores two works that examine new hybrid genres of Western Buddhist autobiographical writing: John D. Barbour’s Journeys of Transformation (2022) and Ben Van Overmeire’s American Koan (2024). In Barbour’s exploration of Western Buddhist travel narratives and Van Overmeire’s examination of American Zen autobiographies based on koan, the scholars face an inherent paradox: Buddhist doctrine teaches no-self, yet autobiographical narratives are fundamentally self-centered. Both scholars demonstrate that Western Buddhist autobiographical narratives succeed precisely by refusing to resolve this tension. This essay examines how both scholars define these emerging genres, explains how they navigate narrating self-dissolution, and assesses how they survey the ways in which marginalized authors strategically foreground oppressed identities as a necessary foundation for spiritual transformation. Barbour and Van Overmeire illuminate how genre innovation serves both literary and soteriological purposes, while broadening the study of Buddhism, as well as religion and literature.

Abstract This review essay examines recent scholarship on African Pentecostalism, focusing on two edited volumes and three monographs published by African scholars since 2023. In discussing these works, the essay traces three interconnected challenges: scholarly positionality and collaboration, definitional debates, and methodological innovation. For each challenge, the essay shows how the scholarship under review presents both the problem and productive ways forward. A common theme throughout is to resist the confining frames of scholarly identity, denominational boundaries, and well-worn debates in order to trace with agility and epistemological transparency the movement’s sprawling connections. The essay concludes that African Pentecostal Studies remains a crucial frontier for understanding global Christianity when scholars follow the innovative and often surprising turns their field presents.

This review essay critically evaluates <i>Human-Centered AI: A Multidisciplinary Perspective for Policy-Makers, Auditors, and Users</i> (Régis et al., 2024), a landmark contribution that reframes artificial intelligence as a social, ethical, and political project rather than a purely technical pursuit. The volume’s strength lies in its methodological pluralism, integrating perspectives from law, healthcare, education, culture, and governance to foreground human flourishing as the central design imperative. By combining conceptual insights with pragmatic frameworks, it advances the human-centered AI (HCAI) paradigm from principle to practice. Limitations include its Euro-American focus and limited Global South perspectives, but the book nonetheless makes a timely and rigorous contribution to AI governance debates, offering policymakers, educators, and researchers critical tools for shaping democratic and inclusive AI futures.

This review essay analyzes Slavoj Žižek’s recent turn to Substack as a publishing platform, examining both his motivations and the philosophical and political implications of this medium for contemporary critical theory. Sankowski and Harris argue that Žižek’s Substack writings continue long-standing themes in his work—anti-capitalism, ecological crisis, updated Communism, and the cultural dimensions of ideology—while also revealing notable shifts, including heightened pessimism about historical progress and new reflections on environmental catastrophe. The authors assess the advantages and pitfalls of Substack for intellectual discourse, including its circumvention of traditional editorial “censorship,” its contribution to information glut, and its role in fostering digital-era political engagement. Through close readings of Žižek’s posts on topics such as the Zambian environmental disaster, the Iberian electricity blackout, sustainable development, and digital-era revolutionary strategy, the essay situates Žižek’s evolving thought in relation to figures such as Kohei Saito and Yanis Varoufakis. The authors conclude that Žižek’s Substack project simultaneously illuminates and complicates his efforts to articulate a renewed Communism and grapple with the political stakes of contemporary technological and ecological crises.

A Perilous Desire: A Review Essay of SherAli Tareen's Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire

Considering the prevalence of migraine and its impact on everyday living, its evolutionary persistence remains puzzling. This essay reviews recent literature and conceptual perspectives that frame migraine attacks as a possible side-effect of prolonged stress and unmet needs. To illustrate this, the article compares the antithetical relationship of triggers and migraine symptoms: During the early phase of the attack, many eat, drink, rest and sleep more and tolerate less nuisance compared to the hours and days before; previously, however, there was too little time to eat, drink, rest, and sleep, and the nuisance had to be tolerated. A relevant characteristic of many migraineurs is that they are prone to stress, e.g., because of a character trait, an impaired adaptation to stress, the lack of habituation to sensory stimuli, and disturbances of the energy supply. In that way, the appearance of the attack during fading stress makes sense: the body seizes the opportunity and communicates its needs when circumstances permit. In this context, the concept of pain as an imperative—a signal designed to enforce behavioural change—provides an insightful framework. Understanding migraine in this way may help reframe its pathophysiology and its clinical and translational significance.

This short review essay focuses on the recently published collection Instrumental Lives: Musical Instrument Material Culture, and Social Networks in East and Southeast Asia, edited by Helen Rees and published by the University of Illinois Press. The essay engages with the volume’s core themes, particularly its reimagining of musical instruments as dynamic, culturally embedded entities shaped by human-nonhuman interactions. Bridging ethnomusicology, anthropology, and museum studies, the anthology advocates interdisciplinary engagement with instruments’ lifespans, agency, and socio-political embeddedness.

Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) is a rare, acquired disorder of complement dysregulation, predisposing patients to complications of intravascular hemolysis, thrombophilia, and marrow failure, with a high risk of mortality without treatment. Allogeneic stem cell transplantation is the only current cure but is typically reserved for marrow failure-predominant disease or when targeted therapies are not available. Terminal complement inhibition with eculizumab has significantly altered management and outcomes for patients with PNH, and the last several years have seen the development and approval of many new complement inhibitors with different molecular targets. Newer inhibitors may also provide options for extended time between doses, for self-administration, and for management of iatrogenic extravascular hemolysis, which can occur secondary to C5 inhibition. This essay reviews the various therapeutic options potentially available to PNH patients, the pros and cons of each treatment, considerations regarding the monitoring of side effects, and the possible complications, as well as breakthrough hemolysis and an approach to shared decision-making.

Coming from a theologian who has maintained a high medieval view of Nicene Orthodoxy against the ravages of Augustinianism, this review essay of David Bentley Hart's Tradition and Apocalypse excavates the unspoken liberal Protestant provenance of his historicist critique of predominant notions of sacred tradition in Orthodox and Catholic circles. Critiques of John Henry Newman and Maurice Blondel demonstrate this claim. His appeal to apocalyptic is also shown silently to rely upon the twentieth-century rediscovery of biblical apocalyptic, from yet another quarter of Protestantism. The apocalyptic ferment of the gospel issuing in doctrinal novelty is illustrated by the Nicene theology: Arius is the defender of traditional formulas and Athanasius the innovator. Yet at the decisive juncture, Hart retreats from the prosecution of bad faith dogmatism, shoring up failed Christendom to find consolation in the metaphysics of the Good. This move, however, leaves him on the horns of a dilemma.