For me, one of the supreme joys of the annual Charleston Literary Festival, which this year runs from Nov. 3-12, is its frequent foray into my own culture beat. This year is no exception.

Consider former New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, who contemplates whether or not we’re in a reading crisis. Or how about scholar Katherine Rundell. At the festival, “Super-Infinite,” her riveting, no-holds-barred biography of Elizabethan poet John Dunne, gets a particularly artsy spin on stage via actor Edoardo Ballerini. And then there’s author Patrick Bringley, whose debut book, “All the Beauty in the World,” chronicles his decade as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in conversation with me, as it happens).

Then there’s Martin Puchner, whose new book, “Culture,” tracks arts and culture — from the Chauvet Cave dating to 35,000 B.C. to the works of Nigerian playwright and novelist Wole Soyinka — to mine contemporary topics such as cultural appropriation. Here, he fields a few of my own questions, serving as a perfect primer for his event on Nov. 9.

Q: What motivated you to take such an ambitious look at culture through the ages?

A: It’s no secret that we’re living through an era of culture wars. As someone who teaches and writes about culture, I found myself confronted with the polarized debates about culture all the time. At some point, I realized that, in the midst of all these culture wars, I had stopped asking myself some of the most fundamental questions about culture: How does culture work? How has it evolved over time? And why does it matter? Clearly, these were “big-picture” questions, and in order to answer them, I needed to tell a story that spanned many millennia.

Q: “Culture” explores how art intersects with history throughout the ages. What can we learn from Queen Nefertiti about that?

A: Queen Nefertiti became one of the most important figures for me in writing the book. I’d had the privilege of seeing her displayed in a museum and couldn’t believe how stunning she looked, as if just recently completed. I started to get curious about the history behind her. I wasn’t prepared for what I found. She and her husband introduced a new religion, one focused on Aten, the god of the sun. In the process, they invented a precursor of monotheism, one of the most consequential inventions in human history.

Nefertiti also revolutionized art, instituting new ways of representing the royal family, which is often depicted basking in the rays of the sun god. The whole thing was a radical experiment, undertaken in a new city. After her death, many of her innovations were stopped, and her legacy was deliberately erased from Egyptian history by subsequent dynasties. The true story of Nefertiti came to light over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, and we’re still uncovering more.

Q: Is there any one piece of art over the course of human civilization that is particularly resonant for you?

A: There are so many, but let me pick one: a pillar erected by the Indian king Ashoka. Ashoka imported the art of erecting pillars from Persia, but he used this particular pillar for a personal message. He inscribed on it: a new idea of kingship, one inspired by Buddhism. This and similar pillars contributed to the spread of Buddhism in India and beyond.

Hundreds of years later, Ashoka’s pillars were encountered by a Chinese traveler, who wrote about them in his diary, wondering what the inscriptions said. Seven hundred years later, a Muslim ruler of India encountered the same pillar on a hunting expedition. He couldn’t read the inscription but was so impressed by this remnant from the distant past that he transported the pillar to his palace in Delhi, where it still stands today.

For me, the pillar exemplifies cultural history: It’s a message to the future that became illegible but that was preserved by future generations and that was finally deciphered in the 19th century.

Q: “Cultural appropriation” is a topical topic these days, with many arguing that borrowing from other cultures should be frowned upon. Your book “Culture” asserts that in some ways it is essential. How so?

A: The problem with “cultural appropriation” is that it assumes that culture is the property of individuals or groups. But if you take any artwork or cultural tradition and study it, you’ll find very quickly that it is composed of elements from other cultures. In this sense, cultural borrowing has always happened and will always happen; it’s the single most important mechanism for cultural development. If you try to stop it, you’re essentially depriving culture of the fuel that makes it run.

I think people who warn us against cultural appropriations are usually worried about things such as disrespectful or ignorant uses of other cultures. Obviously, I’m against that as well. But the best way to diminish disrespect and ignorance, in my view, is not to erect “hands-off” signs. It’s by fostering genuine interest in cultures through education.

Q: On the flip side, we are living in a society where literature is being banned with increasing foment. Is this how humankind has operated — or is it an outlier?

A: People have often fought over literature; I do think this is inevitable. It’s the flip side of the fact that literature matters. If it didn’t matter, people wouldn’t bother to censor it.

Having said that, I’ve come to think that we should be more careful with the notion of “book banning” today. In many cases, all we’re talking about is some parents not wanting a certain book to be in the YA section of a public library. I don’t love that, but I don’t think this quite rises to the level of “book banning.” After all, these books remain widely available; you can order them on Amazon or in local bookstores, and possessing or reading them is not against the law.

What I find more worrying is when publishers actually change words and phrases in “sanitized” versions of books, including children’s books. This sets a dangerous precedent for falsifying the historical record and erases historical difference. We should teach historical difference, the fact that in the past people thought and wrote different from today, not eliminate it.

Q: Is there a particular culture you think has been borrowed from more than others? (Is it a usual suspect, like ancient Greece?)

A: All cultures circulate, but you’re right that some circulate more than others. Chinese culture had an enormous impact all across Asia (Japan’s borrowing of Chinese culture is another great example of historical grafting.) Persian culture radiated outward, as did different traditions of Indian culture.

In the West, it is Greek culture above all, but it’s interesting to ask why. I think it’s not because Greek culture was somehow the best. I mean, it was great, I love it, don’t get me wrong, but the reason why it was so successful was because other cultures felt somehow free to borrow from it. It was the genius of the Greeks to realize that they should encourage others to borrow from their culture, even the Romans who had just defeated them in battle.

Q: When is borrowing from another culture a bad idea?

A: I think that borrowing happens all the time, more or less automatically, so for me it’s less a question of when we should borrow, but how we should do it. When we talk about how to borrow, we can also address what to do and what not to do, such as disrespect or ignorance or extreme differences in power or the theft of objects. But the goal, in my view, should not be less borrowing. It should be more borrowing and better forms of borrowing.

Q: Does art still play as vital a role in our lives as it has in the past? Could it? Should it?

A: I think it does. Art, along with religion, is how we humans try to make meaning in our confusing world. It’s not something we chose to do; we do it out of necessity.

And the good thing is that today so much art from the past is more easily available than at any time in human history, through museums, libraries and, of course, through electronic media. This doesn’t mean that people seek it out, and that’s in part the fault of educators like myself. We need to do a better job at teaching the next generation the value of art so that more people avail themselves of these incredible resources that are often just one click way.

Q: Is there any part of Charleston culture that you’re looking forward to engaging with while in town? Any thoughts on this city’s role in American culture?

A: I’ve had a long-standing interest in the Civil War, in part through my partner, Amanda Claybaugh, who’s been writing a book about it. Amanda and I will definitely visit Fort Sumter and some of the preserved plantation houses. After Charleston, we’ll also travel to the Beaufort and the Sea Islands. I’ve heard a lot about the islands and their history during the Civil War from Amanda and can’t wait to visit.

For more information on the Charleston Literary Festival, visit charlestonliteraryfestival.com.