In this episode, Andrew Sola and Christina Neuhaus, political correspondent for the Agence France-Press in Berlin, analyze the complexities of Germany’s relationship with Russia since World War II. They focus on the gratitude felt by many Germans for the Soviet Union’s approval of German reunification, the guilt felt for atrocities committed against Russia during the Second World War, as well as the greed that created an increasingly unbalanced economic relationship with Russia, driven by energy imports.

In light of the pending rollback of abortion rights by the US Supreme
Court's conservative majority, Stefanie Schäfer and her guest Judith
Rauscher turn to a world without men--as imagined in literary texts from
the turn of the 20th century. Reading feminist utopias such as Charlotte
Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915) and Mary E. Bardley's Mizora. A Prohpecy
(1880/9), they discuss literary representations of an ideal same-sex
state, whiteness, beauty standards, and the interlacing of progressivism
and conservative views of womanhood in the US at a time when women
fought for suffrage and civic equality.

In this episode, Andrew Sola and the Trans-Atlanticist's EU expert Guenter Danner discuss the French election rematch between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. They then delve into the consequences of Viktor Orban's decisive victory in Hungary for the EU, Russia, and Ukraine.

With her guest Nele Sawallisch, Stefanie discusses Esi Edugyan's 2018
novel Washington Black. With Olaudah Equiano's 1789 autobiography as
intertext, the novel entangles the adventure story with the slave
narrative. As Washington Black travels from Barbados to the Arctic, from
Virginia to London, his narrative asks about the (hi)stories that remain
out of the light and the making of 19th century discoverer personas
against the backdrop of gratuitous black labor.

War has returned to Europe. Andrew Sola and Dr. Guenter Danner, our EU expert, unpack what the war means for Ukraine, Russia, and the future of the continent. Was the West delusional in believing that trade and economic relations would prevent Russian aggression? Is Putin a madman or a rational actor? How will the war end?

In our first episode 2022, Lady Fiction takes a cue from Black History
Month to ask about the legacies of black woman celebrities in the US
cultural archive. Stefanie Schäfer's guest is Dr. Samantha Pinto
(UTexas), author of Infamous Bodies. Early Black Women’s Celebrity and
the Afterlives of Rights (Duke UP 2020), whose work on transantional
feminism and black women's performance inquires into our understanding
of the "popular" in popular culture. Fans of Beyoncé will find their
Queen B all over and across this episode, as we read from Morgan
Parker's 2017 poetry collection There are More Beuatiful Things than
Beyoncé.

This episode of LadyFiction discusses Zimbabwean author NoViolet
Bulawayo’s “We Need New Names” (2013), a novel about a young girl who
leaves behind her shantytown childhood to pursue her goals in America.
The novel meditates on home, trauma, and childhood in a globalized
world—and Stefanie Schäfer’s conversation partner is Oksana Marafioti,
US-American writer of Armenian and Russian Romani descent and the author
of “American Gypsy: A Memoir” (2012).

In the final episode of 2021, Andrew Sola and our resident EU expert Dr. Guenter Danner discuss EU refugee policy, the Dublin Agreement, and Fortress Europe; the challenges facing the new German coalition government in 2022; and the likely candidates in the French presidential election coming up in April.

This episode features Stefanie Schäfer and her guest Amanda Halter discussing
their experiences in reading Louisa May Alcott's 1868/9 classic. We talk
about Jo's meanings as tomboy and archetype of white womenhood,
domesticity and nostalgia, and female authorship, touching also on Great
Gerwig's 2019 film version--and finally, we wonder why Little Women
continues to gather, as Anne Boyd Rioux and others have contended, a
predominantly female readership.

In the final episode of the first series of Novel RomAntics, host Douglas Cowie and guest Gregory Miller, a Wisconsin-based educator, discuss Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, a novel that, while telling a story of opiate addiction in the USA, contemplates matters of science, faith, race, immigration, and family.