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.

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 CV.  Please keep in mind that 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.

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

  • Bacon, Eugen, editor. Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction. Bloomsbury Publishing, Nov. 2024.
  • Calhoun, Doyle D. The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire. Duke UP, Oct. 2024.
  • Cowan, Leah. Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? Verso Books, June 2024.
  • Davis, Lennard J. Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those without It. Duke UP, Nov. 2024.
  • Djohar, Hasnul Insani. Rewriting Islam: Decolonialism, Justice, and Contemporary Muslimah Literature. Ohio State UP, Aug. 2024.
  • George, Sheldon and Jean Wyatt, editors. Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women's Writing: Race and Narrative Innovation. Bloomsbury Publishing, Aug. 2024.
  • Gordon, Colby. Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature. The U of Chicago P, Sept. 2024.
  • Harrison, Jaime. Digital Culture in Contemporary Fiction. Liverpool UP, Apr. 2024.
  • Hay, Jonathan. Science Fiction and Posthumanism in the Anthropocene. Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec. 2024.
  • Holmes, Chris. Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature. Bloomsbury Publishing, Oct. 2024.
  • Jenkins, Jerry Rafiki. Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction. The Ohio State UP, Apr. 2024.
  • Jordan, Nicolle. Prolific Ground: Landscape and British Women’s Writing, 1690-1790. Bucknell University Press, Nov. 2024.
  • Jordan, Spencer. Metamodernism and the Postdigital in the Contemporary Novel. Bloomsbury Publishing, Oct. 2024.
  • Kaiser, Birgit M. Hélène Cixous’s Poetics of Voice. Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec. 2024.
  • Lawson, Ashley. On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett. The Ohio State UP, Sep. 2024.
  • Loira, Javier Patiño. The Age of Subtlety: Nature and Rhetorical Conceits in Early Modern Europe. Rutgers UP, June 2024.
  • Robinson, Douglas. Translating the Nonhuman: What Science Fiction Can Teach Us About Translating. Bloomsbury Publishing, Oct. 2024.
  • Malamud, Randy. CRASH! Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec. 2024.
  • Russell, Legacy. Black Meme. Verso Books, May 2024.
  • 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.
  • Webster, Amy. Serialization, Commercialization and the Children’s Classics. Bloomsbury Publishing, Jan. 2025.
  • Zaragoza-De León, Jeanette. Interpreting the Amistad Trials: How Interpreters and Translators Make and Shape History. Bloomsbury Publishing, Feb. 2025.