Podcasts by New Books in Art
Interviews with Scholars of Art about their New Books
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Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
Podcast on the topic Bildende Kunst
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On Filippo Tomasso Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism" from 2022-09-01T08:00
The Manifesto of Futurism was published in 1909, on the front page of Le Figaro, the oldest daily newspaper in France. Its author was Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, a 33-year-old Italian writer who was...
ListenBiscuit Art from 2022-07-04T08:00
Ella Hawkins talks about the biscuits she makes, inspired by her research on Elizabethan dress, and on everything from William Morris wallpapers to TV shows like Outlander and Game of Thrones. She ...
ListenOn Nibiiro Art, the Dalai Lama, and Buddhism from 2022-05-31T08:00
Rima Fujita was born in Tokyo and now resides in Southern California. She graduated from Parsons School of Design with her B.F.A. and has exhibited her work internationally to much acclaim. As a de...
ListenAutotheory from 2022-05-23T08:00
In this episode Kim speaks with Lauren Fournier about autotheory. Lauren has recently published a book on the subject, titled Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism (MIT Pre...
ListenPedith Pui Chan, “The Making of a Modern Art World: Institutionalization and Legitimization of Guohua in Republican Shanghai” (Brill, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Making of a Modern Art World: Institutionalization and Legitimization of Gouhua in Republican Shanghai (Brill, 2017) investigates the production and consumption of guohua (“national painting”) ...
ListenRonald Rael, “Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary” (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With the passage of the Secure Fence Act in 2006, the U.S. Congress authorized funding for what has become the largest domestic construction project in twenty-first century America. The result? App...
ListenDustin Parsons, “Exploded View: Essays on Fatherhood, with Diagrams” (U Georgia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you open Dustin Parsons’ new book, you’ll find maps, figures, footprints, a floor plan, silhouettes of roadside birds, charts of riverbed topography, origami directions for an owl in twenty-six ...
ListenGary Alan Fine, “Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most people have heard of the Masters of Fine Arts–“MFA”–degree, but few know about the grueling process one must undergo to complete one. In Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice o...
ListenJorge Coronado, “Portraits in the Andes: Photography and Agency, 1900-1950” (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Portraits in the Andes: Photography and Agency, 1900-1950 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), Jorge Coronado, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University, examines photogr...
ListenDenise Y. Ho, “Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“In Mao’s China, to curate revolution was to make it material.” Denise Y. Ho’s new book explores this premise in a masterful account of exhibitionary culture in the Mao period (1949-1976) and beyo...
ListenLaura Kina and Jan Christian Bernabe, “Queering Contemporary Asian American Art” (U Washington Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Queering Contemporary Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2017), Laura Kina and Jan Christian Bernabe gather artists and scholars whose work disrupts, challenges, and reimagines way...
ListenSimone Wesner, “Artists’ Voices in Cultural Policy: Careers, Myths and the Creative Profession after German Unification” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why is the artist’s voice missing from cultural policy? In Artists’ Voices in Cultural Policy: Careers, Myths and the Creative Profession after German Unification (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Dr. Si...
ListenReginald Jackson, “Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls” (U Michigan Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deeply in shaping how we understand the past, live in ...
ListenJo Weldon, “Fierce: The History of Leopard Print” (Harper Design, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Leopard print has a long history, as Jo Weldon shares in her new book, Fierce: The History of Leopard Print (Harper Design, 2018). In her illustrated text, Weldon chronicles the history of leopard ...
ListenMarsha MacDowell, Clare Luz, and Beth Donaldson, “Quilts and Health” (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Quilts and Health (Indiana University Press, 2017), Marsha MacDowell and her colleagues examine the phenomenon of health-related quilts, of which there are millions around the world. In fact, an...
Listenmadison moore, “Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Did you catch that look? The theory of fabulousness is on the move. In his new book, Fabulous: the Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric (Yale UP, 2018), madison moore explores some of the sites where fa...
ListenStacey Pierson, “Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London: The Burlington Fine Arts Club” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her latest book, Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London: The Burlington Fine Arts Club (Routledge, 2017), Stacey J. Pierson reveals the fascinating history of ...
ListenAri Heinrich, “Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body” (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ari Larissa Heinrich’s new book, Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body (Duke University Press, 2018), is a fascinating study of representations of the Chinese ...
ListenCary Cordova, “The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), Cary Cordova combines urban, political, and art history to examine how the Mission Di...
ListenMichelle C. Wang, “Mandalas in the Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang” (Brill, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Michelle C. Wang’s new book Mandalas in the Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang (Brill, 2018) joins a growing body of scholarship on esoteric Buddhism in China. Her work is ...
ListenPaula Serafini, “Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How can art change the world? In Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism (Routledge, 2018), Paula Serafini, a Research Associate at the University of Leicester’s CAMEo Research Institute f...
ListenPamela Potter, “Art of Suppression: Confronting the Nazi Past in Histories of the Visual and Performing Arts” (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Art of Suppression: Confronting the Nazi Past in Histories of the Visual and Performing Arts (University of California Press, 2016), Pamela M. Potter, Professor of Germany at the U...
ListenLaura Kalba, “Color in the Age of Impressionism: Commerce, Technology, and Art” (Penn State UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When you imagine the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, what colors do you see? Whatever comes to mind, Laura Kalba’s, Color in the Age of Impressionism: Commerce, Technology, and Art (Pe...
ListenSteven Lubar, “Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Steven Lubar’s latest book Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present (Harvard University Press, 2017), Steven gets to the heart of what makes museums so interesting to both appreciate a...
ListenWojtek Sawa, “The Wall Speaks: Voices of the Unheard” (National Center of Culture, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Wojtek Sawa‘s The Wall Speaks: Voices of the Unheard (National Center of Culture, 2016) is a bilingual Polish-English project that engages with the intricacies of remembering and forgetting as part...
ListenCatherine Soussloff, “Foucault on Painting” (U Minnesota Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Foucault on Painting (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), Catherine Soussloff discusses an area of Foucault’s development that has remained largely overlooked: his engagement with painting. I...
ListenJoseph Sciorra, “Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in NYC” (U Tennessee Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Folklore scholar Joseph Sciorra is the Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in Queens College which is part of the City University of New Y...
ListenErin Edwards, “The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the Posthumous” (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the beginning of the 20th century, surrealists such as André Breton and Man Ray played a game called “Exquisite Corpse.” You can play it by drawing or by writing, and the rules are very simple. ...
ListenSusan M. Squier, “Epigenetic Landscapes: Drawings as Metaphor” (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Susan M. Squier’s book, Epigenetic Landscapes: Drawings as Metaphor (Duke University Press, 2017) is about development— biological and ecological. It explores how the media (paintings, films, grap...
ListenNadia Yaqub and Rula Quawas, “Bad Girls of the Arab World” (U Texas Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Modeled on Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Bad Girls of the Arab World (University of Texas Press, 2017), edited by Nadia Yaqub and the late Rula Quawas stands apart from the edited ...
ListenStephen Monteiro, “The Fabric of Interface: Mobile Media, Design, and Gender” (MIT Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sewing, knitting, quilting, the crafts related to fabric making, are usually not what we think about when we consider our digital communications devices. Yet, many of the activities that we find ou...
ListenCraig Clunas, “Chinese Painting and Its Audiences” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his latest book, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences published in 2017 by Princeton University Press, Craig Clunas puts to question the entire concept of “Chinese painting” by looking at how this...
ListenPeter Gordon and Juan José Morales, "Painter and Patron: The Maritime Silk Road in the Códice Casanatense" (Abbreviated Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I talked to Peter Gordon and Juan José Morales about their book Painter and Patron: The Maritime Silk Road in the Códice Casanatense (Abbreviated Press, 2020). The Códice Casanatense, or Code...
ListenNatchee Blu Barnd, “Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism” (Oregon State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism (Oregon State University Press, 2017), Natchee Blu Barnd examines how Indigenous populations create space and geographies thro...
ListenPhilip D. Plowright, "Making Architecture Through Being Human: A Handbook of Design Ideas" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Architecture can seem complicated, mysterious or even ill-defined, especially to a student being introduced to architectural ideas for the first time. One way to approach architecture is simply as ...
ListenJo Farb Hernandez, “Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments” (Raw Vision, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments (Raw Vision, 2013) is an audacious tome. A comprehensive survey of 45 art environments on the Spanish mainland, ...
ListenAra H. Merjian, "Against the Avant-Garde: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Contemporary Art, and Neocapitalism" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Ara Marjian, Professor of Italian and affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art History at New York University...
ListenLooted Episode 4: Village Pillage (“Field Notes”) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This is the fourth in a series of podcasts from Zoe Kontes’ terrific “Looted.” Archaeologist Dr. Spencer Pope shares his thoughts on looting in Sicily, particularly at the site of Palik, a 2,400 y...
ListenSexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages: A Discussion with Roland Betancourt from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 2020), Roland Betancourt reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in mediev...
ListenMarisa Anne Bass, "Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt (Princeton UP, 2019) Marissa Anne Bass explores the moment when the seismic forces of the Dutch Revolt wreaked havoc on the region’s creative ...
ListenJames Reston, Jr., “A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial” (Arcade Publishing, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
My students don’t remember Vietnam. That’s hard to believe, for someone born in 1968. But it’s true, nonetheless. High school history courses rarely make it past World War Two. The Cold War and th...
ListenCharlotte Eubanks, "The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2019) examines the relations between art and politics in transwar Japan, exploring these via a mi...
ListenMolly Wright Steenson, “Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape” (MIT Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For most people the field of architecture is not what they think about when discussing artificial intelligence as we describe it today. Yet, architects are a part of the historic foundations of wha...
ListenCharles L. Leavitt IV, "Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History" (U Toronto Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History (University of Toronto Press, 2020), Charles Leavitt steps back from the micro-histories focusing more narrowly on, for example, Italian cinema so as to we...
ListenStephen Sheehi, “The Arab Imago: A Social History of Indigenous Photography 1860-1910” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the Arab world, photography is often tied to the modernizing efforts of imperial and colonial powers. However, indigenous photography was itself a major aspect of the cultural and social lives o...
ListenJames Delbourgo, “Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane” (Allen Lane, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
James Delbourgo‘s new book Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane (Allen Lane, 2017) tells the fascinatingly complex and controversial story of Hans Sloane, the man whose colle...
ListenKevin Patrick, “The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero” (U Iowa Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero (University of Iowa Press, 2017), Kevin Patrick examines the history of The Phantom—an American comic strip superhero that made his debut in 1936....
ListenAlison Gerber, “The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is making art a job? This question is central to The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers (Stanford University Press, 2017), the new book by Alison Gerber, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department...
ListenThomas Mullaney, “The Chinese Typewriter: A History” (MIT Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tom Mullaney’s new book The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press, 2017) provides a fascinating first look at the development of modern Chinese information technology. Spanning 150 years from th...
ListenLooted Episode 3: Big Bronzes from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This is the third in a series of podcasts from Zoe Kontes’ terrific “Looted.” There’s nothing like a full-bodied ancient Greek bronze nude to get the crowds to a museum. A visitor might even fall ...
Listenmiriam cooke, “Dancing in Damascus: Creativity, Resilience, and the Syrian Revolution” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Syrian Revolution, which began in March 2011, has since resulted in what can be described as a civil war, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the forced migrations of millions of...
ListenBob Batchelor, “Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), cultural historian and biographer Bob Batchelor examines the life of Marvel’s Stan Lee one of the most iconic figur...
ListenJohn Neel, “Focus in Photography: Master the Advanced Techniques That Will Change Your Photography Forever (Ilex Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Neel’s Focus in Photography: Master the Advanced Techniques That Will Change Your Photography Forever (Ilex Press, 2016) is both instructional manual and analysis on why focus is such an impor...
ListenLaura E. Smith, “Horace Poolaw: Photographer of American Indian Modernity” (U. Nebraska Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Horace Poolaw, Photographer of American Indian Modernity (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), Laura E. Smith, Assistant Professor of Art History at Michigan State University, unravels the compe...
ListenLooted Episode 2: Figure Drawing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This is the second in a series of podcasts from Zoe Kontes’ terrific “Looted.” Marble figurines made ca. 5,000 years ago in the Cycladic Islands of the Aegean became all the rage for collectors, a...
ListenAmanda Bidnall, “The West Indian Generation: Remaking British Culture in London, 1945-1965” (Liverpool UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Just after World War II, West Indians began moving to London in large numbers. The artists, writers, and musicians among them found a place to create, and they found ways to express their complex n...
ListenKathryn Brown. ed., “Perspectives on Degas” (Routledge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Edgar Degas died in the fall of 1917. Marking this 100th anniversary, Kathryn Brown‘s edited collection, Perspectives on Degas (Routledge, 2016) brings together a range of authors and methodologies...
ListenIan Brodie, “A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy” (UP of Mississippi, 2014). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy (The University Press of Mississippi, 2014), Ian Brodie, an associate professor of folklore at Cape Breton University, brings a folkloristic appro...
ListenLeigh Claire La Berge, "Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The last twenty years have seen a rise in the production, circulation, and criticism of new forms of socially engaged art aimed at achieving social justice and economic equality. Leigh Claire La B...
ListenLooted Episode 1: Gold Digger from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This is the first in a series of podcasts from Zoe Kontes’ terrific “Looted.” Listen to the story of a gold funerary wreath, looted from Northern Greece in the 1990s, smuggled into Germany, and ev...
ListenGerShun Avilez, "Black Queer Freedom: Spaces of Injury and Paths of Desire" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Whether engaged in same-sex desire or gender nonconformity, black queer individuals live with being perceived as a threat while simultaneously being subjected to the threat of physical, psychologic...
ListenRichard Rabinowitz, “Curating America: Journeys through Storyscapes of the American Past” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Richard Rabinowitz is one of the leading public historians in the United States. He has helped conceptualize, design, organize, and build over 500 history programs across the U.S. at such sites as ...
ListenDavid C. Lane, "Other End of the Needle: Continuity and Change Among Tattoo Workers" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Other End of the Needle (Rutgers University Press, 2020), David C. Lane, Ph.D. investigates the intricacies of the tattoo industry. Particularly, Lane found that tattooing is more complex th...
ListenMartha J. Cutter, “The Illustrated Slave: Empathy, Graphic Narratives, and the Visual Culture of the Transatlantic Abolition Movement, 1800-1853” (U. Georgia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery as a system of torture and bondage has fascinated the optical imagination of the transatlantic world for centuries. Scholars have examined various aspects of the visual culture that was sla...
ListenJanis Tomlinson, "Goya: A Portrait of the Artist" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The life of Francisco Goya (1746–1828) coincided with an age of transformation in Spanish history that brought upheavals in the country’s politics and at the court which Goya served, changes in soc...
ListenMarion Deshmukh, “Max Liebermann: Modern Art and Modern Germany” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Max Liebermann: Modern Art and Modern Germany (Routledge 2015), Marion Deshmukh, the Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History Emeritus at George Mason University, examines the life an...
ListenRachel Berenson Perry, "The Life and Art of Felrath Hines: From Dark to Light" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I talked to Rachel Berenson Perry about her book The Life and Art of Felrath Hines: From Dark to Light (Indiana University Press, 2019). Felrath Hines (1913–1993), the first African American ...
ListenRobert W. Cherny, “Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art” (U. Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Best remembered today for his work as a muralist, the Russian-American artist Victor Arnautoff lived a life worthy of Hollywood. In Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art (University of Illinois ...
ListenRob DeSalle, "A Natural History of Color: The Science Behind What We See and How We See it" (Pegasus Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is color a phenomenon of science or a thing of art? Over the years, color has dazzled, enhanced, and clarified the world we see, embraced through the experimental palettes of painting, the advent o...
ListenLauren Lessing, et.al., “A Usable Past: American Folk Art at the Colby College Museum of Art”(Colby College Museum of Art, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A Usable Past: American Folk Art at the Colby College Museum of Art (Colby College Museum of Art, 2016) is a contemporary analysis of paintings, works on paper, sculptures, needlework, quilts and o...
ListenTom Holert, "Knowledge Beside Itself: Contemporary Art's Epistemic Politics" (Sternberg Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the role and function of contemporary art in economic and political systems that increasingly manage data and affect? Knowledge Beside Itself: Contemporary Art's Epistemic Politics (Sternbe...
ListenDonna M. Cassidy, Elizabeth Finch, and Randall R. Griffey, “Marsden Hartley’s Maine” (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Marsden Hartley’s Maine (Yale University Press, 2017), published to accompany a major exhibition of his work organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Colby College Museum of Art, traces ...
ListenMyroslav Shkandrij, "Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930: Contested Memory" (Academic Studies Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Myroslav Shkandrij’s Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930: Contested Memory (Academic Studies Press, 2019) offers an insight into the development of the Ukrainian avant-garde, a topic which still ...
ListenLaura Larson, “Hidden Mother” (Saint Lucy Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Hidden Mother by Laura Larson was published by Saint Lucy Press (January 2017), with 96 pages and 26 Color and black and white images. Hidden Mother tells the story of the adoption of Larson’s dau...
ListenRobin Mitchell, "Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France" (U Georgia Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The preface to Robin Mitchell's new book, Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France (University of Georgia Press, 2020) moves me. In it, the author tells the stor...
ListenDana Mills, “Dance and Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries” (Manchester University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dance & Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries (Manchester University Press, 2017) by Dana Mills, considers dance as a political expression from a number of perspectives, situating the analysis within ...
ListenJeanine Michna-Bales, “Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When the Sun comes back And the first quail calls Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd. For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom If you follow the Drinkin’ Gourd. -“Follow the Drinkin’ Go...
ListenDavid J. Carol, “No Plan B” (Peanut Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
No Plan B by David J. Carol was published by Peanut Press Books in 2017. The book is a retrospective of David’s work with 32 black and white images and an afterward by photojournalist Jason Eskenaz...
ListenGillian McIver, “Art History for Filmmakers: The Art of Visual Storytelling” (Bloomsbury, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gillian McIver‘s Art History for Filmmakers: The Art of Visual Storytelling (Bloomsbury, 2016) is a ground-breaking book that illustrates the relationships among the histories of painting and cinem...
ListenPaul Youngquist, “A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism” (U. Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The legendary band leader Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on Earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting with the d...
ListenAdair Rounthwaite, “Asking the Audience: Participatory Art in 1980s New York” (U. Minnesota Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Asking the Audience: Participatory Art in 1980s New York (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) Adair Rounthwaite examines the roles of artist, audience and institutional context in the rise of n...
ListenDiscussion with George White, President of Up With Paper/Jumping Jack Press (Bologna Book Fair, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
George White, President and COO of Up With Paper and Jumping Jack Press interviewed following the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, discusses the intricacies of creating pop-up art for greeting cards a...
ListenAmy Elkins, “Black is the Day, Black is the Night” (Self Published, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Black is the Day, Black is the Night by Amy Elkins is self-published (2016), with an essay by Gregory J. Harris and C.F., unpaged, 80 color and black-and-white illustrations. Black is the Day, Bla...
ListenMatteo Faglia, “Pop-Up Show: The Magic Inside Books” (Bologna Children’s Book Fair Exhibition, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Matteo Faglia, discusses the 2017 Bologna Book Fair exhibition, “Pop-up Show: The Magic Inside Books,” which traces some of the important milestones in the story of 3-dimensional, or as they have b...
ListenDorothy Ko, “The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China” (U. of Washington Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dorothy Ko‘s new book is a must-read. Troubling the hierarchy of head over hands and the propensity to denigrate craftsmen in Chinese history, The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in...
ListenMark Alice Durant, “27 Contexts – An Anecdotal History in Photography” (Saint Lucy Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
27 Contexts –An Anecdotal History in Photography by Mark Alice Durant was published by Saint Lucy Books (January, 2017) with 288 pages and 90 Color and black and white images. 27 Contexts is a ser...
ListenBenjamin Fondane, “Existential Monday” (NYRB Classics, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Benjamin Fondane, a Franco-Romanian writer and contributor to the development of existential philosophy in the 1930s and 40s, is in the process of being rediscovered. His work has gained a new rele...
ListenRuth Beckford and Careth Reid, “The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph” (Arcadia, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not w...
ListenAndrew Causey, “Drawn to See: Drawing as Ethnographic Method” (U. Toronto Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book Drawn to See: Drawing as an Ethnographic Method (University of Toronto Press, 2016) Andrew Causey argues that social science practitioners can cultivate new ways of experiencing the...
ListenKarl Baden, “The Americans by Car” (Retroactive Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Americans by Car is Karl Baden’s latest book. An homage to Robert Frank’s The Americans and Lee Friedlander’s America by Car, Baden’s book “is a personal, more specific answer to the vague ques...
ListenChristopher Pizzino, “Arresting Development: Comics at the Boundaries of Literature” (U of Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There’s a common myth about the history of comic books and strips. It’s the idea that the medium languished for decades as a sort of time-wasting hobby for children, but now has redeemed itself and...
ListenDamion Searls, “The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing” (Crown, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and The Power of Seeing (Crown, 2017), Damion Searls presents the first biography of Hermann Rorschach and the history of the Rorsc...
ListenPaul LeValley, “Art Follows Nature: A Worldwide History of the Nude” (Edition One Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul LeValley’s Art Follows Nature: A Worldwide History of the Nude (Edition One Books, 2016) is the first comprehensive study of the nude in art from around the world written by a naturist. Based ...
ListenElana Shapira, “Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siecle Vienna” (Brandeis UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siecle Vienna (Brandeis University Press, 2016), Elana Shapira, Lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, examine...
ListenDaniel Magaziner, “The Art of Life in South Africa” (Ohio University Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Daniel Magaziner’s latest book, The Art of Life in South Africa (Ohio University Press, 2016, and UKZN Press, 2017), is a welcome addition to the intellectual history of South Africa. Rich in color...
ListenDaniel W. Coburn, “The Hereditary Estate” (Kehrer Verlag, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Hereditary Estate by Daniel W. Coburn, is published by Kehrer Verlag (2015), with an essay by Karen Irvine, Curator and Associate Director at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, ...
ListenDavid Shafer, “Antonin Artaud” (Reaktion/U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Artaud lived with his neck placed firmly in the noose.” -Bauhaus* David Shafer’s new biography, Antonin Artaud (Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press, 2016), situates the life of th...
ListenLeon Borensztein, “Sharon” (Kehrer Verlag, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Photographer Leon Borensztein began Sharon (Kehrer Verlag, 2016), his most personal project, thirty years ago when his daughter was born: “Throughout my artistic career, I have been driven by the n...
ListenAmy Von Lintel, “Georgia O’Keeffe: Watercolors, 1916-1918” (Radius, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In “Georgia O’Keeffe: At Home in the Wonderful Nothing,” a text accompanying the exhibition catalogue Georgia O’Keeffe: Watercolors 1916-1918 (Radius Books and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 2016), A...
ListenPaul Benneworth et al., “The Impact and Future of Arts and Humanities Research” (Palgrave, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the future for Arts and Humanities in Europe? The podcast discusses these questions with Paul Benneworth, one of the authors, along with Magnus Gulbrandsen and Ellen Hazelkorn, of The Impac...
ListenAmani Willett, “Amani Willett: Disquiet” (Damiani Factory, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Amani Willett: Disquiet by Amani Willett, is published by Damiani Factory (2013), with an afterward by Marvin Heiferman, 128 pages. “Disquiet’s cinematic look suggests the palpable spaces in which ...
ListenDarcy Grimaldo Grigsby, “Enduring Truths: Sojourner’s Shadows and Substance” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Runaway slave Sojourner Truth gained fame in the nineteenth century as an abolitionist, feminist, and orator and earned a living partly by selling photographic carte de visite portraits of herself ...
ListenScot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, “The Art of the Bible: Illuminated Manuscripts from the Medieval World” (Thames and Hudson, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On today’s program, I talk with Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle about their new book, The Art of the Bible Illuminated Manuscripts from the Medieval World, published by Thames and Hudson (and di...
ListenFederica Goffi, “Time Matter(s): Invention and Reimagination in Built Conservation” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Assistant Professor Federica Goffi fills a blind spot in current architectural theory and practice with this book, Time Matter(s): Invention and Re-Imagination in Built Conservation: The Unfinished...
ListenByrd Williams, “Proof: Photographs from Four Generations of a Texas Family” (U. of North Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Proof: Photographs from Four Generations of a Texas Family by Byrd Williams, with text by Byrd Williams IV, forward by Roy Flukinger and afterword by Anne Wilkes Tucker, is published by the Univers...
ListenKirsty Sedgman, “Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre Wales” (Intellect Books 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The value of the arts is a constant and vital question in contemporary culture. In Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre Wales (Intellect Books, 2016) Kirsty Sedgman, Br...
ListenPaul C. Taylor, “Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics” (Wiley Blackwell, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why is it controversial to cast light-skinned actress Zoe Saldana as the lead character in a film about the performer Nina Simone? How should we understand the coexisting desire and revulsion of th...
ListenRobert Brain, “The Pulse of Modernism: Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siecle Europe (U. of Washington Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” Oscar Wilde famously observed. Wilde’s waning romanticism can be read in stark contrast with Nietzsche, who argued around the same time, “art is...
ListenApril Dammann, “Corita Kent: Art and Soul: The Biography” (Angel City Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sister Mary Corita, IHM (1918-1986), was a beloved artist and teacher whose role as the rebel nun continues to inspire contemporary audiences. Corita joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of M...
ListenStephen Dupont, “Piksa Niugini” (Peabody Press/Radius Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Piksa Niugini by Stephen Dupont, with forward by Robert Gardner and essay by Bob Connolly, is published by the Peabody Press and Radius Books, (2013). Volume 1: 144 pages, 80 duotone, 6 color image...
ListenStevphen Shukaitis, “The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor after the Avant-Garde” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How is the notion of the avant-garde in art relevant today? What can contemporary social movements learn from the Situationists? What is the meaning of artistic value to forms of resistance? These,...
ListenRobert Herman, “The New Yorkers” (Proof Positive Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The New Yorkers by Robert Herman, with an introduction by Sean Corcoran, Curator of Prints and Photographs at the City Museum of New York, is published by Proof Positive Press (2015). Robert Herman...
ListenE.R. Truitt, “Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art” (U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s third law, coined in 1973, expresses the difficulty that people of any era have in reconciling the bounds of curren...
ListenJade Doskow, “Lost Utopias” (Black Dog Publishing, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since 2007, American photographer Jade Doskow has been documenting the remains of World’s Fair sites, once iconic global attractions that have often been repurposed for less noble aspirations or ne...
ListenAlfred S. Posamentier and Robert Geretschlager, “The Circle: A Mathematical Exploration Beyond the Line” (Prometheus Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alfred S. Posamentier and Robert Geretschlager, The Circle: A Mathematical Exploration Beyond the Line (Prometheus Books, 2016) goes considerably beyond what its modest title would suggest. The cir...
ListenMiki Kratsman with Ariella Azoulay, “The Resolution of the Suspect” (Radius Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Resolution of the Suspect by Israeli photographer Miki Kratsman, with text by Ariella Azoulay, is co-published by the Peabody Museum Press at Harvard and Radius Books of Santa Fe, NM (2016). Mr...
ListenStephen Lee Naish, “Create or Die: Essays on the Artistry of Dennis Hopper” (Amsterdam UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Stephen Lee Naish first became aware of Dennis Hopper watching David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, jumpstarting what would become a long examination of Hopper’s ambitions and creative output as an actor, fi...
ListenSilvia Jonas, “Ineffability and Its Metaphysics: The Unspeakable in Art, Religion, and Philosophy” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There is a long history in philosophy, art and religion of claims about the ineffable from The One in Plotinus to Kant’s noumena or thing-in-itself to Wittgenstein’s famous remark at the end of Tra...
ListenMorgan Pitelka, “Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Morgan Pitelka’s new book looks closely at the material culture of the Three Unifiers of the late sixteenth century in Japan– Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu–in order to foreg...
ListenRachel Price, “Planet/Cuba: Art, Culture and the Future of the Island” (Verso, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Cuban artists have been very productive this past decade, producing stunning and surprising works against a backdrop of political and economic transformation as well as continuing scarcity on the i...
ListenPaul Roquet, “Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Roquet’s wonderful new book begins with an offering of jellyfish and proceeds to teach us how to read the air. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)...
ListenDiana L. Linden, “Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene” (Wayne State UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene (Wayne State University Press, 2015), Diana L. Linden, an art historian of American art based in Claremont, California, explore...
ListenSusan Cahan, “Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The struggle for representation within the art museum is the focus of a timely and important new book by Susan Cahan, Associate Dean for the Arts at Yale College. Mounting Frustration: The Art Muse...
ListenKevin Bubriski, “Look into My Eyes: Nuevomexicanos por Vida, ’81-’83” (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kevin Bubriski, a New Englander and internationally acclaimed photographer, was a freelance photojournalist when he first arrived in New Mexico in 1981 to study filmmaking in Santa Fe. Bubriski rec...
ListenBrent Walker, “The Hidden South–Come Home” (Beaver’s Pond Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Hidden South–Come Home (Beaver’s Pond Press, 2016) is the result of an ongoing project that documents intimate stories of people who are often overlooked in society. Photographer and author Bre...
ListenSandow Birk, “American Qur’an” (Liveright, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Could the Qur’an–understood, according to Muslims, as the verbatim word of God in Arabic–acquire a nationality? Specifically, could it be American? And written in English? Contemporary visual artis...
ListenJohn Brian King, “Nude Reagan” (Spurl Editions, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nude Reagan (Spurl Editions, 2016) is John Brian King’s second book of photography. His first book, LAX: Photographs of Los Angeles 1980-84, was published by Spurl Editions in 2015. For his most re...
ListenKen Light, “Whats Going On? 1969 -1974” (Lighted Square Media, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What’s Going On? 1969 -1974 (Lighted Square Media, 2015) is Ken Light‘s ninth book. Ken started his professional life as a photojournalist at his college newspaper in 1969 and has developed a caree...
ListenStern, et al., “The Monk’s Haggadah: A Fifteenth-Century Illuminated Codex from the Monastery of Tegernsee” (Penn State UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Monk’s Haggadah: A Fifteenth-Century Illuminated Codex from the Monastery of Tegernsee (Penn State UP, 2015) is unique. The book, edited by David Stern, Christoph Markschies, and Sarit Shalev-E...
ListenPamela D. Winfield, “Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kukai and Dogen on the Art of Enlightenment” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What role do images play in the enlightenment experience? Can Buddha images, calligraphy, mandalas, and portraits function as nodes of access for a practitioner’s experience of enlightenment? Or ar...
ListenTahneer Oksman, “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (Columbia University Press, 2016), Tahneer Oksman explores the graphic memoirs of sev...
ListenEubanks, Abel and Chen, eds., “Verge: Studies in Global Asias 1.2: Collecting Asias” (U of Minnesota Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Verge: Studies in Global Asias is an inspiring and path-breaking new journal that explores innovative forms for individual and collaborative scholarly work. I had the privilege of talking with Char...
ListenHillary Chute, “Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form (Harvard UP, 2016), Hillary Chute analyses the documentary power in the comics-form sometimes known as “graphic novels...
ListenKrista A. Thompson, “Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice (Duke University Press, 2015) is a gorgeous book. It’s about light and the practices of self representation in diasporic a...
ListenKishwar Rizvi, “The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her excellent new book The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East (UNC Press, 2015), Kishwar Rizvi, Associate Professor of the History of Art at...
ListenDavid Wright, “Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility,” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is cultural taste? How is it formed, imagined and patterned? In Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), David Wright, Associate Professor at ...
ListenGeorge Cotkin, “Feast of Excess: A Cultural History of the New Sensibility” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
George Cotkin is an emeritus professor of history at California Polytechnic State University. In his book Feast of Excess: A Cultural History of the New Sensibility (Oxford University Press, 2015) ...
ListenLynn Gamwell, “Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I’m talking with Lynn Gamwell about Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History (Princeton University Press, 2015). This book is a breathtaking combination of scholarship and beauty, tracing the ...
ListenRoberta Wue, “Art Worlds: Artists, Images, and Audiences in Late 19th-Century Shanghai” (U of Hawaii Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Roberta Wue‘s new book brings readers into the world of late Qing Shanghai, a center of art, culture, and entertainment. As artists fled to the city after the Taiping Rebellion, they helped create ...
ListenRebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, “To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture: The Cultural Policy of The Cuban Revolution” (PM Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What are the alternatives to the current neo-liberal cultural settlement prevailing in much of the global north? In To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture: The Cultural Policy of The Cuban R...
ListenMegan Prelinger, “Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age” (Norton, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Megan Prelinger‘s beautiful new book brings together the histories of technology and visuality to ask the question, “What cultural history of electronics can be extrapolated from a close look at th...
ListenPing Foong, “The Efficacious Landscape: On the Authorities of Painting at the Northern Song Court” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ink landscape painting was distinctive to the Song dynasty, and the Northern Song period was a special time for the medium. By the tenth century, this kind of painting emerged as a “scholars’ categ...
ListenPaul Bonin-Rodriguez, “Performing Policy” (Palgrave, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How has American cultural and artistic policy changed over the last 25 years? Performing Policy: How Contemporary Politics and Cultural Programmes Redefined US Artists for the Twenty-First Century ...
ListenIlan Stavans and Jorge J. E. Garcia, “Thirteen Ways of Looking At Latino Art” (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As demographic trends continue to mark the so-called “Latinization” of the U.S., pundits across various media outlets struggle to understand the economic, cultural, and political implications of th...
ListenDarren Middleton, “Rastafari and the Arts: An Introduction” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While many are familiar with the call for ‘One Love’ from the music of Bob Marley they more than likely know little about the tradition that this message is rooted in. In Rastafari and the Arts: An...
ListenDerek Sayer, “Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History” (Princeton UP 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Prague, according to Derek Sayer, is the place “in which modernist dreams have time and again unraveled.” In this sweeping history of surrealism centered on Prague as both a physical location and t...
ListenJonathan M. Reynolds, “Allegories of Time and Space: Japanese Identity in Photography and Architecture” (U of Hawaii Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jonathan M. Reynolds‘s new book looks carefully at how photographers, architects, and others wrestled with a postwar identity crisis as they explored and struggled with new meanings of tradition, h...
ListenNick Sousanis, “Unflattening” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nick Sousanis‘s new book is a must-read for anyone interested in thinking or teaching about the relationships between text, image, visuality, and knowledge. Unflattening (Harvard University Press, ...
ListenMeryle Secrest, “Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography” (Knopf, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As Meryle Secrest notes in the introduction to her new book, Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography (Knopf, 2014),”The most extraordinary fashion designer of the twentieth century is now just a name on a p...
ListenGreg Barnhisel, “Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Greg Barnhisel‘s new book, Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy (Columbia UP, 2015) examines how modernism was defanged, re-packaged, and resold during the Cold War...
ListenMagda Romanska, “The Post-Traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor” (Anthem Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jerzy Grotowsky and Tadeusz Kantor were influential in avant-garde theater in the West in the 1960s and 1970s, receiving high critical regard despite the fact that audiences could not understand th...
ListenJohn Sharp, “Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art” (MIT Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
That games, particularly video games, could be viewed as art should come as no surprise. And yet, a debate exists over what is and should be considered art with respect to games. In his new book, W...
ListenRitu G. Khanduri, “Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2014) is a wonderful piece of visual anthropology by Ritu Gairola Khanduri, which uses the histo...
ListenMelissa Dabakis, “A Sisterhood of Sculptors: American Artists in Nineteenth-Century Rome (Penn State UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In A Sisterhood of Sculptors: American Artists in Nineteenth-Century Rome (Penn State University Press, 2014), Melissa Dabakis takes readers on an unexpected journey from Boston to Rome to discover...
ListenKristina Kleutghen, “Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in the Qing Palaces” (U of Washington Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kristina Kleutghen‘s beautiful new book offers a fascinating window into the culture of illusion in China in the eighteenth century and beyond. Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in ...
ListenAnn C. Pizzorusso, “Tweeting Da Vinci” (Da Vinci Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ann C. Pizzorusso‘s new book is a wonderfully creative and gorgeously illustrated meeting of geology, art history, and Renaissance studies. Arguing that understanding Italy’s geological history can...
ListenJen Harvie, “Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism” (Palgrave, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Arts and culture are under threat in the age of austerity. This threat is underpinned by the misuse of the idea of participation in contemporary performance. This is one of the central arguments of...
ListenSteven Shaviro, “The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Steven Shaviro‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging study of speculative realism, new materialism, and the ways in which those fields can speak to and be informed by the philosophy of Alfred North ...
ListenGene Luen Yang, “Boxers & Saints” (First Second, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I love picking up a historical monograph in which the footnotes count for a quarter or more of the total pages. Most students don’t share this strange love of mine. I’m therefore always trying to f...
ListenDaniel Margocsy, “Commercial Visions: Science, Trade, and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age” (University of Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Daniel Margocsy‘s beautiful new book opens with a trip to Amsterdam by Baron Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, and closes with a shopping spree by Peter the Great. These two trips bookend a series of...
ListenCarolyn L. Kane, “Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Color, Computer Art, and Aesthetics after Code” (U of Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Carolyn L. Kane’s new book traces the modern history of digital color, focusing on the role of electronic color in computer art and media aesthetics since 1960. Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Colo...
ListenJoan Kee, “Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Joan Kee‘s new book is a gorgeous and thoughtful introduction to the history of contemporary art in Korea. Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method (University of Minnesota Pre...
ListenCatherine W. Bishir, ‘Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1770-1900’ (UNC Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Seeking to fill the gap in scholarship focused on African American artisans in the American South, Catherine W. Bishir uses the very specific location of New Bern, North Carolina to “dig a deep hol...
ListenLara Jaishree Netting, “A Perpetual Fire: John C. Ferguson and His Quest for Chinese Art and Culture” (Hong Kong UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Lara Netting’s new book explores the life, career, and work of one man as a window into the history and associated practices of “Chinese art” during a period of massive transformation in the China ...
ListenJames Nisbet, “Ecologies, Environments, and Energy Systems in Art of the 1960s and 1970s” (MIT Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is a rare event when a dissertation focused on a single work yields a rich and fruitful account of an entire period. James Nisbet‘s new book, which began as a study of Walter De Maria’s 1977 Lan...
ListenCraig Clunas, “Screen of Kings: Royal Art and Power in Ming China” (University of Hawaii Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Craig Clunas‘s new book explores the significance of members of the imperial clan, or “kings” in Ming China. A king was established in a “state” (guo), and mapping the Ming in terms of guo‘s is a w...
ListenOmar W. Nasim, “Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Omar W. Nasim‘s new book, a series of fascinating characters sketch, paint, and etch their way toward a mapping of the cosmos and the human mind. Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the ...
ListenMatthew C. Hunter, “Wicked Intelligence” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The pages of Matthew C. Hunter‘s wonderful new book are full of paper fish, comets, sleepy-eyed gazes, drunk ants, and a cast full of fascinating (and sometimes hilarious) members of the experiment...
ListenAnne Gerritsen, "The City of Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and the Early Modern World" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We think of blue and white porcelain as the ultimate global commodity: throughout East and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean including the African coasts, the Americas and Europe, consumers desired ...
ListenEli Maor and Eugen Jost, “Beautiful Geometry” (Princeton UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Beautiful Geometry (Princeton UP, 2014), by the mathematician prof. Eli Maor and the noted artist Eugen Jost. It’s a fascinating collaboration which helps to bridge the gap deplored by C. P. Snow ...
ListenStephen H. Whiteman, "Where Dragon Veins Meet: The Kangxi Emperor and His Estate at Rehe" (U Washington Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1702, the second emperor of the Qing dynasty ordered construction of a new summer palace in Rehe (now Chengde, Hebei) to support his annual tours north among the court’s Inner Mongolian allies. ...
ListenBrian Jay Jones, “Jim Henson: The Biography” (Ballantine Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the field of children’s programming, few people- with the possible exception of Fred Rogers- are as beloved as Jim Henson, a contributor to Sesame Street and Saturday Night Live, but most famous...
ListenC. Thi Nguyen, "Games: Agency as Art" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Monopoly, Solitaire, football and Minecraft are all games, but for C. Thi Nyugen they are also an art form – specifically, the art form of agency, our capacity to set goals and pursue them. In Game...
ListenChristine Yano, “Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Li...
ListenSilvie Jacobi, "Art Schools and Place: Geographies of Emerging Artists and Art Scenes" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is an art school? In Art Schools and Place: Geographies of Emerging Artists and Art Scenes (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Dr Silvie Jacobi, a researcher and head of education at London School...
ListenPauline Turner Strong, “American Indians and the American Imaginary: Cultural Representation Across the Centuries” (Paradigm Publishers, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pauline Turner Strong‘s new book American Indians and the American Imaginary: Cultural Representation Across the Centuries (Paradigm Publishers, 2012) traces the representations of Native Americans...
ListenSianne Ngai, "Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form (Harvard University Press, 2020), Sianne Ngai continues her theoretical work of demystifying the vernacular aesthetic categories enc...
ListenJonathan Hay, “Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China” (University of Hawaii Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) is a study of domestically produced, portable decorative arts in early modern China. Decorative o...
ListenJessica Zychowicz, "Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine" (U Toronto Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine (University of Toronto Press, 2020) tells the unique story of a generation of artists, feminists, and queer activist...
ListenAnne-Marie O’Connor, “The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer” (Knopf, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Reporter Anne-Marie O’Connor uses the iconic gold portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer to engage us in the exciting cultural life of fin-de-siecle Vienna, where wealthy Jewish patrons supported the work o...
ListenFernando Domínguez Rubio, "Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do you keep the cracks in Starry Night from spreading? How do you prevent artworks made of hugs or candies from disappearing? How do you render a fading photograph eternal—or should you attempt...
ListenAmanda MacKenzie Stuart, “Empress of Fashion: Diana Vreeland, A Life” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The title says it all: Diana Vreeland was, in fact, that Empress of Fashion, reigning over Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute for half a century. As a re...
ListenWilliam P. Seeley, "Attentional Engines: A Perceptual Theory of the Arts" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do we distinguish art from non-art artifacts, and what does cognitive science have to do with it? In Attentional Engines: A Perceptual Theory of the Arts (Oxford University Press, 2020), Willia...
ListenKathryn Livingston, “Lilly: Palm Beach, Tropical Glamour, and the Birth of a Fashion Legend” (Wiley, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s rare that a person’s name comes to represent an object, but such is the case with Lilly Pulitzer. Just say ‘Lilly’ and it conjures images of simple sheath dresses in vivid colors. But what of ...
ListenDave O’Brien, "Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries" (Manchester UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It would be hard to overstate the importance of culture. It teaches us, heals us, rips us apart and puts us back together in new and surprising ways. Given its fundamental importance to the human e...
ListenWilliam Marotti, “Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei was prosecuted in the 1960s for producing work that imitated money. His single-sided, monochrome prints of the 1,000 yen note generated a wide-ranging set of debate...
ListenJill Richards, "The Fury Archives: Female Citizenship, Human Rights, and the International Avant-Gardes" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Fury Archives: Female Citizenship, Human Rights, and the International Avant-Gardes (Columbia UP 2020), Jill Richards radically rewrites our understanding of first-wave feminism by demonstra...
ListenIan Condry, “The Soul of Anime” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
You may come for the Astro Boy or Afro Samurai, but you’ll stay for the innovative ways that Ian Condry‘s new book brings together analyses of transmedia practice, collaboration, and materialities ...
ListenPrita Meier, "Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere" (Indiana UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On the Swahili coast of East Africa, monumental stone houses, tombs, and mosques mark the border zone between the interior of the African continent and the Indian Ocean. In Swahili Port Cities: The...
ListenGennifer Weisenfeld, “Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gennifer Weisenfeld‘s gorgeous and thoughtful new book explores the visual culture that emerged in the wake of the Kanto earthquake of 1923. Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’...
ListenTamar Herzig, "A Convert’s Tale: Art, Crime, and Jewish Apostasy in Renaissance Italy" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Tamar Herzig, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, the Director of Tel Aviv University’s Morris E Curiel Institute for Europea...
ListenLois Rudnick, “The Suppressed Memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan” (University of New Mexico Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The art salon is sadly less prevalent in our day than in days past, but it is far from obsolete. In its heyday, the salon provided people- particularly women Natalie Barney, orPerle Mesta)- with an...
ListenRonak K. Kapadia, "Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War"(Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Duke University Press), Ronak K. Kapadia theorizes the world-making power of contemporary art responses to US militarism in ...
ListenJanice Neri, “The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Before the sixteenth century, bugs and other creepy-crawlies could be found in the margins of manuscripts. Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, insects crawled their way to ...
ListenBeth Pickens, "Your Art Will Save Your Life" (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a teenager visiting the Andy Warhol Museum, Beth Pickens realized the importance of making art. As an adult, she has dedicated her life to empowering working artists. Intimate yet practical, You...
ListenDaniela Bleichmar, “Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment” (University of Chicago Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Daniela Bleichmar‘s new book is a story about 12,000 images. In Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2012), Bleichma...
ListenT. Fischer and C.M. Herr, "Design Cybernetics: Navigating the New" (Springer, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Those who have followed this podcast in the past, and those who follow developments in cybernetics in the present, will be no strangers to the name Ranulph Glanville. This brilliant, multiple-PhD h...
ListenShih-Shan Susan Huang, “Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shih-Shan Susan Huang‘s beautiful new book explores visual culture of religious Daoism, focusing on the tenth through the thirteenth centuries. Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Tra...
ListenMadina Tlostanova, "What Does it Mean to be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In What Does it Mean to be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire (Duke University Press, 2018), Madina Tlostanova traces how contemporary post-Soviet art mediates this hum...
ListenJennifer Hall-Witt, “Fashionable Acts: Opera and Elite Culture in London, 1780-1880” (University of New Hampshire Press, 2007) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I was young I liked to go to bars, especially bars where bands were playing. But when I got there, I often didn’t listen very carefully. And in truth, I wasn’t there to see the band; I was the...
ListenVesna Kittelson, "Lost and Found in America" (U Minnesota Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The prolific artistic production of Vesna Kittelson always maintains autobiographical connections: her installations of deconstructed books and her luminous drawings of fountains recall her childho...
ListenBen Cawthra, “Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography in Jazz” (University of Chicago Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ben Cawthra‘s Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz (University of Chicago, 2011) discusses the way images of jazz and the musicians who played it both reflected and influenced our ra...
ListenKaren Patel, "The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour: Arts, Work and Inequalities" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How has social media changed inequality in the cultural industries? In The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour: Arts, Work and Inequalities (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Karen Patel, AHRC Le...
ListenMiryam Sas, “Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Miryam Sas’ Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is an exceptionally rich study that has a great deal to ...
ListenAmy Von Lintel, "Georgia O'Keeffe's Wartime Texas Letters" (Texas A&M UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1912, at age 24, Georgia O’Keeffe boarded a train in Virginia and headed west, to the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, to take a position as art teacher for the newly organized Amarillo Public S...
ListenAndrew Field, “Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919-1954” (The Chinese University Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“To think of Shanghai is to think of its nightlife: the two are synonymous.” From here, Andrew Field takes us on a dance across modern Chinese history, through its nightscapes and ballrooms, into ...
ListenNozomi Naoi, "Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan" (U Washington Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nozomi Naoi’s Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2020) is the first book-length English-language study of one of Japan’s iconic twenti...
ListenDavid Ciarlo, “Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany” (Harvard UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a native-born American, you’re probably familiar with Aunt Jemima (pancake syrup), Uncle Ben (precooked rice), and Rastus (oatmeal)–commercial icons all. They were co-oped in whole or par...
ListenLinda Goddard, "Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin (Yale University Press, 2019), Linda Goddard investigates the role that Paul Gauguin’s writings played in his artistic practice and in his negotiation ...
ListenAllen Guttmann, “Sports and American Art from Benjamin West to Andy Warhol” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I was a kid, I used to pore over an illustrated history of American sports that I had received as a birthday gift. The oversized, hardcover book featured some of the iconic images of 20th-cent...
ListenBrett Dakin, "American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and The Battles of Lev Gleason" (Chapterhouse Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and The Battles of Lev Gleason (Chapterhouse Publishing, 2020), Brett Dakin, Gleason’s great-nephew delves into the life of his famous relative. Gleason ro...
ListenErin Haney, “Exposures: Photography and Africa” (Reaktion Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Chapter 3 of Erin Haney’s excellent book Photography and Africa (Reaktion Books, 2010) there are seven photos taken in central Africa at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Six advertise pr...
ListenJunior Tomlin, "Junior Tomlin: Flyer and Cover Art" (Velocity Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Junior Tomlin: Flyer & Cover Art (Velocity Press, 2020) showcases the artwork of Junior Tomlin. Featuring flyers and record covers Tomlin has created for the rave scene starting in the late 1980s, ...
ListenAntonia Levi, Mark McHarry, and Dru Pagliasotti, “Boy’s Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre” (McFarland, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Growing up in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indy-car racing offered my friends and me some very exciting heroes. As children, we played “Indy 500” on our bikes in the cul-de-sac. As we became teenag...
ListenEmily Wallace, "Road Sides: An Illustrated Companion to Dining and Driving in the American South" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Emily Wallace, author and illustrator of the new book Road Sides: An Illustrated Companion to Dining and Driving in the American South (University o...
ListenLee Ambrozy, “Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009” (MIT Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anyone who has been following the news this year has likely heard of Ai Weiwei. This provocative and gifted Chinese artist-activist has made 2011 headlines for his controversial work Circle of Anim...
ListenLaurie Olin, "Be Seated" (ORO Editions, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I talked to Laurie Olin about his book Be Seated (ORO Editions, 2017). Olin’s interest in public outdoor seating in parks and civic spaces revolves around two poles: the first is a concern fo...
ListenBhanu Athaiya, “The Art of Costume Design” (HarperCollins, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Bollywood, the Hindustani film genre based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), has long been known for its lavish costumes and sets. Now comes a sumptuous book from a master costume designer, and the firs...
ListenAngela S. Chiu, "The Buddha in Lanna: Art, Lineage, Power, and Place in Northern Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For centuries, wherever Thai Buddhists have made their homes, statues of the Buddha have provided striking testament to the role of Buddhism in the lives of the people.?The Buddha in Lanna: Art, Li...
ListenBenjamin Binstock, “Vermeer’s Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice” (Routledge, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ben Binstock‘s Vermeer’s Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice (Routledge, 2009) is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. It does what all good history books s...
ListenLaurie Olin, "France Sketchbook" (ORO Editions, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For centuries artists and designers have recorded places, people, and life in travel sketchbooks. Over a period of fifty years, Laurie Olin, one of America’s most distinguished landscape architects...
ListenKyra Hicks, “This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces” (Black Threads Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I’ll tell you something I’ve never really understood: the difference between “art” and “craft.” Yes, I get the sociological difference (“art” is made in New York and Paris; “craft” is made in Omaha...
ListenYuhang Li, "Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did Buddhist women access religious experience and transcendence in a Confucian patriarchal system in imperial China? How were Buddhist practices carried out in the intimate settings of a boudo...
ListenGreg Castillo, “Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design” (Minnesota UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s in suburbia, you probably lived in a smallish ranch house that looked like this. That house probably had an “ultra modern” kitchen that probably looked like thi...
ListenChristopher Bonanos, "Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous" (Henry Holt, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the middle of the twentieth century, a newspaper photographer who went by the name of Weegee took memorable pictures of New York City’s street life that appeared everywhere from tabloid newspape...
ListenChristian Kleinbub, "Michelangelo’s Inner Anatomies" (Penn State UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Michelangelo’s Inner Anatomies (Penn State University Press), Christian Kleinbub challenges the notion that Michelangelo, renowned for his magnificent portrayals of the human body, was merely co...
ListenAna María Reyes, "The Politics of Taste: Beatriz González and Cold War Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Politics of Taste: Beatriz González and Cold War Aesthetics (Duke University Press, 2019), Ana María Reyes examines the ways Colombian artist Beatriz González and Argentine-born art critic M...
ListenAnne Godfrey, "Active Landscape Photography: Theoretical Groundwork for Landscape Architecture" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Photographs play a hugely influential but largely unexamined role in the practice of landscape architecture and design. Through a diverse set of essays and case studies, this seminal text unpacks t...
ListenScott Henderson, "Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is hard to discuss the current film industry without acknowledging the impact of comic book adaptations, especially considering the blockbuster success of recent superhero movies. Yet transmedia...
ListenSusie Hodge, "The Short Story of Architecture" (Laurence King Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What makes a building’s design come alive as it helps shape our existence? Listen in as I discuss this and other questions with Susie Hodge, author of The Short Story of Architecture: A Pocket Guid...
ListenPablo Meninato, "Unexpected Affinities: The History of Type in Architectural Project from Laugier to Duchamp" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While the concept of "type" has been present in architectural discourse since its formal introduction at the end of the eighteenth century, its role in the development of architectural projects has...
ListenBreanne Fahs, "Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution" (Verso, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution (Verso, 2020), Breanne Fahs has curated a comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos from the nineteenth century to today. Fahs collected o...
ListenBrian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...
ListenRoxann Prazniak, "Sudden Appearances: The Mongol Turn in Commerce, Belief, and Art" (U Hawaii Press 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The “Mongol turn” in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries forged new political, commercial, and religious circumstances in Eurasia. This legacy can be found in the “sudden appearances” of common...
ListenIva Glisic, "The Futurist Files: Avant-Garde, Politics, and Ideology in Russia, 1905–1930" (NIU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Futurism was Russia's first avant-garde movement. Gatecrashing the Russian public sphere in the early twentieth century, the movement called for the destruction of everything old, so that the past ...
ListenÜnver Rüstem, "Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Istanbul, there is a mosque on every hill. Cruising along the Bosphorus, either for pleasure, or like the majority of Istanbul’s denizens, for transit, you cannot help but notice that the city’s...
ListenLeslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...
ListenJacki Apple, "Performance / Media / Art / Culture: Selected Essays 1983-2018" (Intellect Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Performance / Media / Art / Culture: Selected Essays 1983-2018 (Intellect Books, 2019) collects more than thirty years of critical writing by artist and writer Jacki Apple. These essays trace impor...
ListenRachel Kauder Nalebuff, "Stages: On Dying, Working, and Feeling" (Thick Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Can care be enacted through art? Inside a cathedral, staff members from a nursing home work with an artist to perform a poetic text about caregiving, loss, and taking the time to feel one’s feeling...
ListenAlex Berke, "Beautiful Symmetry: A Coloring Book about Math" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alex Berke's Beautiful Symmetry (MIT Press, 2020) is both a fascinating book and a concept -- it's like no other book I’ve ever read. It's a coloring book about math, inviting us to engage with mat...
ListenChristiane Gruber, “The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspape...
ListenMari Coates, "The Pelton Papers" (She Writes Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Like the better-known and perhaps luckier Georgia O’Keeffe, the American painter Agnes Pelton also found her unique vision in the western desert. As Mari Coates details in our conversation, Pelton ...
ListenMargaret Hillenbrand, "Negative Exposures: Knowing What Not to Know in Contemporary China" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The fact that secrecy and the concealment of information is important in today’s China is hardly a secret in itself, yet the ways that this secrecy is structured and sustained in such a vast societ...
ListenMatt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...
ListenElizabeth Goldring, "Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Limning – the painting of miniature portraits – was an important art form in 16th-century Europe. Among its greatest practitioners was Nicholas Hilliard, who enjoyed an international reputation for...
ListenPhillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...
ListenCaitlin Frances Bruce, "Painting Publics: Transnational Legal Graffiti Scenes as Spaces for Encounter" (Temple UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Public art is a form of communication that enables spaces for encounters across difference. These encounters may be routine, repeated, or rare, but all take place in urban spaces infused with emoti...
ListenMaria Taroutina, "The Icon and the Square: Russian Modernism and the Russo-Byzantine Revival" (Penn State UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Icon and the Square: Russian Modernism and the Russo-Byzantine Revival (Penn State University Press, 2018), Maria Taroutina examines how the traditional interests of institutions such as the...
ListenAlex Dika Seggerman, "Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With scholarship in the discipline of history witnessing a shift toward global approaches to local historical processes, new questions are being raised about how to identify commensurate theoretica...
ListenK. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...
ListenK. B. Berzock, "Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The companion publication to the 2019-2020 traveling exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa (Princeton University Press, 2019, pub...
ListenJane D. Hatter, "Composing Community in Late Medieval Music: Self-Reference, Pedagogy, and Practice" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are a handful of pieces from the Medieval and Renaissance periods that most music students learn about in their introductory history courses; among them are Guillaume Du Fay’s, Ave regina cel...
ListenApril Eisman, "Bernhard Heisig and the Fight for Modern Art in East Germany" (Camden House, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, Bernhard Heisig and the Fight for Modern Art in East Germany (Camden House, 2018), April Eisman examines one of East Germany's most successful artists as a point of entry into the vibr...
ListenFran Altvater, "Sacramental Theology and the Decoration of Baptismal Fonts" (Cambridge Scholars, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Fran Altvater talks about the Medieval Pilgrimage, a practice that became central to Christian Europe in the early Middle Ages and evolved into the military pilgrimages of the Crusades in the 11th,...
ListenThomas Yarrow, "Architects: Portraits of a Practice" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is creativity? What is the relationship between work life and personal life? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? These deep and deeply personal qu...
ListenErin Schoneveld, "Shirakaba and Japanese Modernism: Art Magazines, Artistic Collectives, and the Early Avant-Garde" (Brill, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Befitting an art history book, Erin Schoneveld’s Shirakaba and Japanese Modernism: Art Magazines, Artistic Collectives, and the Early Avant-Garde (Brill, 2018) is a beautifully packaged analysis of...
ListenAlberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...
ListenRoland Elliot Brown, "Godless Utopia: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda" (FUEL, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the arc of Soviet history, few government programs were as tenacious as the anti-religious campaign, which systematically set out to debunk organized religion as "the opium of the people." This ...
ListenGary Meisner, "The Golden Ratio: The Divine Beauty of Mathematics" (Race Point Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the pyramids of Giza, to quasicrystals, to the proportions of the human face, the golden ratio has an infinite capacity to generate shapes with exquisite properties. This book invites you to t...
ListenJohanna Taylor, "The Art Museum Redefined: Power, Opportunity, and Community Engagement" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the future of the museum? In The Art Museum Redefined: Power, Opportunity, and Community Engagement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Johanna Taylor, an assistant professor at the Herberger Insti...
ListenNoelle Giuffrida, "Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Noelle Giuffrida’s book, Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America (University of California Press, 2018), tells the history of collecting and exhibi...
ListenKathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...
ListenJ. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...
ListenCatherine Clark, "Paris and the Cliché of History: The City in Photographs, 1860-1970" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What’s the first image that comes to mind when you hear the words “Paris” and “photography”? Is it a famous photo, perhaps an Atget, Brassai, or Doisneau? In her new book, Paris and the Cliché of H...
ListenGabriel Jones, "Splashes" (RVB Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The images featured in Splashes (RVB Press, 2018) are characteristic of Gabriel Jones’ approach to making images by capturing the “backdrop”, things behind the original subject. There is a performa...
ListenJennifer C. Lena, "Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts" ( Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did American elites change the meaning of Art? In Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts (Princeton University Press, 2019), Jennifer C. Lena, associate professor of arts...
ListenSusan Jaques, "The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession That Shaped An Empire" (Pegasus Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession That Shaped An Empire (Pegasus Books, 2018), Susan Jaques offers up a richly detailed and researched account ...
ListenSean Foley, "Changing Saudi Arabia: Art, Culture and Society in the Kingdom" (Lynne Rienner, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Changing Saudi Arabia, Art, Culture and Society in the Kingdom (Lynne Rienner, 2019), Sean Foley offers eye-opening insights into a changing society that is under the international magnifying gl...
ListenElizabeth Otto, "Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this segment of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Elizabeth “Libby” Otto, Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies and Executive Director of the Humanities Institute at th...
ListenCarlos Garrido Castellano, "Beyond Representation in Contemporary Caribbean Art" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A work of art about doing nothing; a work of art that invites people to take it apart; a work of art that consists of two people walking in a town in the Dominican Republic. These are just some exa...
ListenMelissa McCormick, "The Tale of Genji: A Visual Companion" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Genji Album (1510) in the Harvard Art Museums is the oldest dated set of Genji illustrations known to exist. In The Tale of Genji. A Visual Companion, published by Princeton University Press in...
ListenNancy S. Steinhardt, "Chinese Architecture: A History" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If there’s one thing that conjures up the – rightly contested – idea of a ‘civilisation’, it is grand palatial or religious buildings, and many such structures are foremost in how China is imagined...
ListenSarah Anne Carter, "Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The metaphor “object lesson” is a familiar one, still in everyday use. But what exactly does the metaphor refer to? In her book Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sens...
ListenKimberly Alexander, "Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Fashion is universal,” writes my guest Kimberly Alexander in her book Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018), “enabling historians across time, place, and cul...
ListenAmy Lippert, "Consuming Identities: Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Along with the rapid expansion of the market economy and industrial production methods, such innovations as photography, lithography, and steam printing created a pictorial revolution in nineteenth...
ListenEleonor Gilburd, "To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Josef Stalin’s death in 1953 marked a noticeable shift in Soviet attitudes towards the West. A nation weary of war and terror welcomed with relief the new regime of Nikita Khrushchev and its focus...
ListenJohn Etty, "Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: Krokodil’s Political Cartoons" (UP of Mississippi, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: Krokodil’s Political Cartoons (University Press of Mississippi, 2019), Dr. John Etty explains how Krokodil magazine provided a venue in which the state, the t...
ListenJohn J. Curley, "Global Art and the Cold War" (Laurence King Publishers, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It was the passionate amateur painter, Winston Churchill, who introduced one of the Cold War’s key metaphors: The Iron Curtain. As John J. Curley argues in Global Art and the Cold War (Laurence Kin...
ListenLinda M. Grasso, "Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe and Twentieth-Century Feminism" (U New Mexico Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Linda M. Grasso's Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe & Twentieth-Century Feminism (University of New Mexico Press, 2017) provides an in-depth look at O'Keeffe's ambivalent relationship with femi...
ListenAnne A. Cheng, "Ornamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her original and thought-provoking book Ornamentalism (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anne A. Cheng illustrates the longstanding relationship between the ‘oriental’ and the ‘ornamental’. So doi...
ListenLisa Blee and Jean M. O'Brien, "Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Installed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1921 to commemorate the tercentenary of the landing of the Pilgrims, Cyrus Dallin's statue Massasoit was intended to memorialize the Pokanoket Massasoit (le...
ListenChip Sullivan, “Cartooning the Landscape” (U Virginia Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This is a magically journey about the mystery of the design process. Chip Sullivan's Cartooning the Landscape (University of Virginia Press, 2016) is about using your drawing skills to exercise and...
ListenCaitlín Eilís Barrett, "Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019) is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery in Roman households. Caitlín Eilís Bar...
ListenChip Colwell, "Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Gr...
ListenHarold Holzer, "Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French" (Princeton Architectural Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Harold Holzer has written a biography of one of America’s greatest public artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Daniel Chester French. In Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel ...
ListenSigrid Lien, "Pictures of Longing: Photography and the Norwegian-American Migration" (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In one of history’s largest migrations, hundreds of thousands of Norwegians immigrated to North American during the 1800s and early 1900s. In addition to letters sent home, Norwegian-Americans ofte...
ListenAnne Cheng, "Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Anne Cheng (she/hers)--Professor of English and Director of the Program ...
ListenDiscussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...
ListenSeth Bernard, "Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy (Oxford University Press, 2018), offers a holistic treatment of the development of the Mid-Republican city from 396 to 168 B...
ListenFarhana Shaikh, "From Imposter to Impact: Arts Leadership in the 21st Century" (Dahlia Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What are the characteristics of the 21st Century arts leader? In From Imposter to Impact: Arts Leadership in the 21st Century (Dahlia Publishing, 2019), Farhana Shaikh, a writer, publisher, and jou...
ListenAlexander Langlands, "Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts" (Norton, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alexander Langlands is a British archaeologist, historian, writer, and broadcaster. His most recent book, Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts, was published b...
ListenS. A. Duncan and A. McClellan, "The Art of Curating: Paul J. Sachs and the Museum Course at Harvard" (Getty Research Institute, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Andrew McClellan and Sally Anne Duncan’s book offers a behind-the-scenes exploration of the career of Paul J. Sachs (1878-1965) and the graduate program he developed at Harvard University and the F...
ListenNadia Amoroso, "Representing Landscapes: A Visual Collection of Landscape Architectural Drawings" (Routledge, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nadia Amoroso’s Representing Landscapes: A Visual Collection of Landscape Architectural Drawings (Routledge, 2012) is a collaboration between landscape architecture professors and practitioners lea...
ListenSun-Young Park, "Ideals of the Body: Architecture, Urbanism, and Hygiene in Postrevolutionary Paris" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We know quite a bit about the physical signatures of urban “modernity” foisted upon Paris by Baron Haussmann in the late nineteenth century — the broad boulevards, networked infrastructures, connec...
ListenElizabeth Macaulay-Lewis. "Classical New York: Discovering Greece and Rome in Gotham" (Empire States Editions, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A new book explores how and why New York City became a showcase for the art and architectural styles of ancient Greece and Rome. Classical New York: Discovering Greece and Rome in Gotham (Empire St...
ListenElizabeth A. Fraser, "Mediterranean Encounters: Artists Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839" (Penn State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Elizabeth A. Fraser's Mediterranean Encounters: Artists Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839 (Penn State University Press, 2017) takes its readers on a journey through six illustrated t...
ListenBenoît Majerus, "From the Middle Ages to Today: Experiences and Representations of Madness in Paris" (Parigramme, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With Paris as the organizing locus of his new book, Du moyen âge à nos jours, expériences et représentations de la folie à Paris [From the Middle Ages to Today, Experiences and Representations of M...
ListenKellie Jones, "South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s" (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
New York City might have been the epicenter of the twentieth century American art scene, but Los Angeles was no slouch either, writes Kellie Jones in South of Pico: African American Artists in the ...
ListenMcKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...
ListenCatherine Russell, "Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices (Duke University Press, 2018), Catherine Russell defines "archiveology" as “the reuse, recycling, appropriation and borrowing o...
ListenMark J. Blechner, "The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sigmund Freud may have been the first to popularize the study of dreams, but several scholars since Freud have advanced our understanding of dreams in revolutionary ways. Among them is Mark Blechne...
ListenNivedita Lakhera, “Pillow of Dreams” (Nivedita Lakhera, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pillow of Dreams (Nivedita Lakhera, 2017) is an intensely emotional and inspirational collection of poetry and art by Dr. Nivedita Lakhera. She experienced a stroke, divorce, and then a heartbreak ...
ListenEric D. Weitz, “Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What can the Weimar Republic teach us about how democracies fail? How could the same vibrancy that gave us cultural touchstones spawn Nazism? In his new book Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Pr...
ListenGreg Castillo, “Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design” (Minnesota UP, 2009) from 2010-05-07T18:04:34
If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s in suburbia, you probably lived in a smallish ranch house that looked like this. That house probably had an “ultra modern” kitchen that probably looked like thi...
ListenGreg Castillo, “Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design” (Minnesota UP, 2009) from 2010-05-07T18:04:34
If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s in suburbia, you probably lived in a smallish ranch house that looked like this. That house probably had an “ultra modern” kitchen that probably looked like thi...
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