Enfilade

From Bloomsbury:

Petra Zeller Dotlacilová, Performance Costume in 18th-Century France: Louis-René Boquet between Tradition and Reform (London: Bloomsbury, 2026), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1350531000, $120.

Petra Zeller Dotlacilová’s study examines the development of theatrical costumes in France during the long 18th century, including the abandonment of long-established traditions, the need to negotiate with the dictates of fashion, and the translation of new ideas into material practice. Using Louis-René Boquet (1717–1814)—the leading costume designer of the French court and the Paris Opera—as its lens, the book traces the development of costume reform from an aesthetics of propriety, defined by strict conventions, to an aesthetics of truthfulness, more open to ideas and inspiration from the visual arts and from real life. Full of rich primary source material in the form of newspaper articles, letters, plays, librettos, drawings and images of garments, and illustrated in full colour throughout, the author shows how playwrights, theatre managers, designers, tailors and performers all contributed to the changes in the design and conception of costume during the 18th century.

Petra Dotlacilová holds a PhD in Dance Studies from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic, as well as a PhD in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University, Sweden. In her research, she specializes on European dance history and theatrical costume of 16th to 18th century. In particular, she explores aesthetic and material properties of costumes, international transfers in design and relations between garments and movement practices.

c o n t e n t s

Acknowledgements
Note on Translation
List of Abbreviations

Introduction
Studying historical costume in performance
Boquet: between tradition and reform

Chapter 1 | Making of Costume for Performing Arts
Design Process at the French Court and the Opéra
Costumes at Comédie-Française, Comédie-Italienne and Opéra Comique
Self-fashioning at the Opéra: Designer vs the Soloists
Shaping Costumes According to Performing Arts and Gender

Chapter 2 | The Tradition, or the Aesthetics of Propriety
To Dress Properly: Social Norms of Clothing
‘Something rich and yet true to nature’: verisimilitude and the merveilleux
The Artistic Genres: Rules and Principles
Dressing the genres: French costumes for opera and ballet before Boquet
Breaking point: Expanding genres and fashions
The freedom of the fairground theatre and the Comédie-Italienne

Chapter 3 | The First Wave of Reform, or Towards the Aesthetics of Truthfulness
What is a ‘truthful costume’?
Les philosophes on costume and dress
The Reform in Practice: The problem of genre

Chapter 4 | Reform at the Opéra and the Court
Between the court and the fairground theatre: shepherds, peasants and Le Devin du village
Le Devin du village: a play with the appearances
First Greeks ‘correctly costumed in ancient style’ at the Opéra
Old Alceste in new clothes
‘Costumes of all ages and countries’

Chapter 5 | How to Dress Dance?
Development and diversity of dance techniques
Habit sérieux
Habit demi-caractère
Habit comique

Chapter 6 | Towards the Second Wave of the Reform, and Beyond
New fashions, new costumes: the triumph of simplicity
Boquet and Neoclassicism
Stage costume between nature and art

Glossary
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index

From The University of Chicago Press:

Marc Stein, Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2026), 416 pages, ISBN: 978-0226847412, $30.

As the United States marks its semiquincentennial in 2026, renowned historian Marc Stein looks back at the politics of another landmark celebration during a time of striking similarities and surprising differences: the US bicentennial in 1976. In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the bicentennial sparked an extraordinary national conversation about the country’s past, present, and future. As patriots, planners, profiteers, and protesters argued about how to commemorate the national birthday, they collectively reimagined the promises and perils of democracy during a transformational decade.

From award-winning historian Marc Stein, Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s is an original, illuminating, and insightful study of that era. While focusing on festivities and fights in Philadelphia, the nation’s birthplace, the book also explores the many proposed and abandoned celebrations that percolated up around the country. It tells a broadly democratic story of both the ‘official’ bicentennial and counter-bicentennial activism, offering revolutionary perspectives on national politics, social movements, and popular culture. From the queer courtship of President Richard Nixon and Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo to parades and protests with millions of participants, and from a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at Philadelphia’s most prestigious hotel to the establishment of groundbreaking African American, ethnic, and Jewish museums, the bicentennial reveals a kaleidoscope of American peculiarities, problems, and possibilities. The lasting influence of 1976 on one of the nation’s great urban centers and the United States as a whole is undeniable. As the nation—once again enmeshed in political and social upheaval—marks its two-hundred-fiftieth birthday in 2026, there is no better time to look back at its two-hundredth and marvel at what has changed, and what has not.

Marc Stein is the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of US History and Constitutional Law at San Francisco State University. He is the 2026–27 president of the Organization of American Historians and director of the OutHistory website. His previous books include City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, Sexual Injustice, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement, The Stonewall Riots, and Queer Public History.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction
1  The Queer Courtship of Richard Nixon and Frank Rizzo
2  The Rise and Fall of Five Bicentennial Plans
3  The ‘Do-It-Yourself’ Bicentennial
4  Ford to Bicentennial City: Drop Dead
5  ‘We Are the Bicentennial’
6  ‘Freedom’s Way—U.S.A.’
7  Philadelphia Renaissance
8  Happy Birthday, USA
9  Let Freedom Ring
Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

From Bloomsbury:

Alley Marie Jordan, Classical Taste in the Architectural World of Thomas Jefferson (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-1350428508, $115.

Reaching beyond politics and law, this book focuses on Thomas Jefferson as an aesthetic classicist.

Jefferson embraced the influence of antiquity through his adoption of classical architecture in his Virginia residences, in order to establish Rome as an ancestor to America. In a time of significant political and cultural change, he aligned himself with a Greco-Romano legacy that represented knowledge, power and art. Alley Marie Jordan studies the architectural and landscape spaces of Jefferson’s classical taste, which include the villas of Monticello and Poplar Forest, as well as the University of Virginia. An examination of these places exposes his deeply entrenched views of the importance of classics in Virginia, and reveals them as expressions of admiration of classical antiquity.

Seeking to uncover an underexplored side of his character, Jordan deconstructs his identity through a classical lens and illustrates his influence on American culture, as well as his desire to reform it via the classics. By dislodging Jefferson from American politics, this study redefines his worldview and motivations for inventing an American virtue based on Horace’s utile dulci. Although his participation in acquiring classical taste was not unique for his time, he did accomplish a unique aim with classicism: the blending of the American landscape with classical culture to create a ‘new’ American virtue.

Alley Marie Jordan is a garden historian with a PhD in Classics from the University of Edinburgh.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations

‘A Sublime Luxury’: An Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Classical Taste, Aesthetics, and Architecture
1  Jefferson in Context
2  Thomas Jefferson the Epicurean: Exploring Jefferson’s Classical Philosophy
3  The Genius Loci at Thomas Jefferson’s Classical Villas: Monticello and Poplar Forest
4  The Politician in a Landscape
5  ‘The Land of Dreams’: Thomas Jefferson’s Classical University
6  Classical Curiosities, a Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

From Bloomsbury:

Brianna Robertson-Kirkland and Louise Duckling, eds., Women and Transnational Cultural Exchange, 1550–1850 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1350512283, $115.

Focusing on the international circulation of culture and ideas by women in the early modern period through the long eighteenth century, this book amplifies their presence in history, finding new ways to explore their transnational encounters and exchanges. Providing a rich introduction to the topic of women’s transnational interactions, the essays build a diverse picture of female engagement with the wider world and consider how women interpreted, influenced, or transferred culture and ideas around the globe. Examining figures such as Aphra Behn, Charlotte Bonaparte, and Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, this book looks at novels, memoirs, poetry, translations, travel writing, and plays, as well as considering the ways in which women’s public lives have been ‘written’ in music, portraits, and printed images, and their roles in the international exchange of art and material culture.

Brianna E. Robertson-Kirkland is a Lecturer in Historical Musicology at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Louise Duckling is an independent scholar based in the UK.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction — Brianna Robertson-Kirkland and Louise Duckling

Prologue | Power
Postcard 1  Queen Mary I and La Peregrina — Valerie Schutte
1  Maria Theresa and Catherine II: Women Rulers Transmitting Unexpected Gender Notions far beyond Their Realms — Ruth Dawson

Part 1 | Culture
Postcard 2  The 188-Page Letter-Memoir: Mary Anne Canning’s Life Writing as a Defense of Her Motherhood — Rachel Bynoth
2  Imagining England: Recovering Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s Memoirs of the Court of England (1707) — Daisy Winter
3  The Racial Politics of the Chilean Family in Maria Graham’s Journal of a Residence in Chile (1824) — Valentina Aparicio
4  ‘Today, Two Vent’rous Females Spread the Sail’: The Presence of Female Travelers in the Works of Mariana Starke — Eva Lippold

Part 2 | Knowledge
Postcard 3  ‘A New World of Ideas’: Knowledge Exchange in Helen Maria Williams’s Translation of Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative (1814–29) — Louise Duckling
5  Madeleine de Scudéry, Aphra Behn, and Translation: Using the ‘Carte de Tendre’ for Cross-Channel Communication of Women’s Ideas — Amelia Mills
6  ‘Suns, wich to Some other Worlds Give Light’: Transnational Philosophies of the Universe in Margaret Cavendish’s Poems and Letters — Masuda Qureshi
7  Science, Art, and Knowledge: Nancy Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft and the Illustration of Cuban Flora — Elisa Garrido

Part 3 | Art
Postcard 4  Collecting Travel Memories: Charlotte Bonaparte’s Family Album — Arlene Leis
8  Aletheia Talbot and the Art of Italy: England’s First Female Collector — Breeze Barrington
9  Back through Time and beyond Britain: Revealing Polytheistic Imagination and British Imperial Resolve in Eleanor Coade’s Artificial Stone Products, 1769–1821 — Miriam al Jamil

Part 4 | Music
Postcard 5  Mrs Macglashan of Jamaica — Andrew Bull
10  ‘Quite Different from What It Is Abroad’: Elizabeth Wynne’s Musical Exchanges — Penelope Cave
11  The Murrays of Warrawang: Scots in Australia — Brianna Robertson-Kirkland

Epilogue
Postcard 6  Felicia Hemans, the Monument of Zalongo, and the ‘Dance’ of a Moment in History — Trijit Acharyya

Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index

From Cambridge UP:

Ho-fung Hung, The China Question: Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026), 336 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1009559775, £30 / $40.

For centuries, Western scholars portrayed China either as a land of superior morality, economy, and governance or as a formidable country of pagans that posed a global threat to Western values. Idealized images of China were used to shame rulers for their incompetence, while China was demonized as an external threat to cover up domestic political failures. In the twentieth century, the geopolitics of global capitalism have facilitated more nuanced perspectives, but the diversifying of knowledge about China is far from complete. In this thought-provoking study, Ho-fung Hung finds that both Western elites and China’s authoritarian regime today continue to promote many Orientalist stereotypes to advance their economic interests and political projects. He shows how big-picture historical, social, and economic changes are inextricably linked to fluctuations in the realm of ideas. Only open debate can overcome extremes of fantasy and fear.

Ho-fung Hung is Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy in the Department of Sociology and Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

c o n t e n t s

Figures
Preface

Introduction: Orientalism in the Longue Durée

I | Catholic Scholarship
1  From Pax Mongolica to the Long Sixteenth Century
2  The Seventeenth-Century Crisis and the Rise of Sinophilia

II | Enlightenment Philosophy
3  Early Enlightenment Sinophilia
4  Late Enlightenment Sinophobia

III | Institutionalized Orientalism
5  Romantic Sinology after the French Revolution
6  Scientific-Racist Sinology in the Age of Empire

IV | Cold War Area Studies
7  From Sinology to China Studies
8  The ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’ Myth

V | Self-Orientalism
9  Self-Orientalizing Nation Building
10  Contested Confucianism

Conclusion: De-Orientalizing Triumph, Re-Orientalizing Perils

References
Index

From Princeton UP:

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, The Atlas of World Embroidery: A Global Exploration of Heritage and Styles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2026), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-0691261911, £50 / $60.

A richly illustrated history of embroidery and needlework, showcasing the glorious range of styles, motifs, and materials used around the world.

Embroidery is one of the world’s most widely shared forms of creative expression—and one of its most varied and diverse. It can be found in every region, yet its visual languages, themes, and techniques vary greatly: some are marked by unique styles and others show influences from neighboring cultures. The Atlas of World Embroidery examines many distinctive embroidery styles and traditions found across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. From the quillwork and birch boxes of Indigenous North America to the decorative matyo style of Hungary, the zardozi embroiderers of India, and the satin stitches of Han Dynasty China, Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood provides a comprehensive history of embroidery, describing its materials and tools, its designs and symbols, and its uses and makers. Emphasizing the visual aspects of embroidery across cultures, the atlas features an unprecedented array of color images celebrating the art form. Organized geographically by region and country, and focusing on hand needlework with relevant examples of machine forms, The Atlas of World Embroidery is a beautiful and authoritative exploration of this ancient craft.

• Lavishly illustrated throughout in full color with more than 300 images.
• Features full and close-up images of embroidered fabrics, including household items and clothing, along with insightful analysis.
• Includes sections on the Americas; Europe; Sub-Saharan Africa; the Arabic World; Turkey, the Iranian Plateau, and Central Asia; the Indian Subcontinent; East Asia; and Southeast Asia and Australasia—with subsections on individual countries, cultures, and kinds of embroidery.
• Contains a directory of design motifs depicting patterns from around the world.

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood is a design historian and textile archaeologist. She is director of the Textile Research Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands, and chief editor of the multivolume Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Embroidery. She is the coauthor of Dressed with Distinction: Garments from Ottoman Syria and Covering the Moon: An Introduction to Middle Eastern Face Veils.