Podcasts by New Books in Popular Culture
Interviews with Scholars of Popular Culture about their New Books
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Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
Podcast on the topic Gesellschaft und Kultur
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Generation Why?: Do We Need "Generations?" from 2023-01-04T09:00
Who gets to define generational cohorts and do they obscure more than illuminate? GuestsNeil Howe, author of Generations Tony Tulathimutte, author of Why There’s No ‘Millennial’ NovelLearn more a...
ListenSeriously Funny: Politics and Comedy from 2023-01-03T09:00
What happens when politics becomes comedy and the jester becomes the king? GuestsEmily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker Avi Steinberg, writerKwesi Mensah, comedian Learn more about...
ListenSeriously Funny: Politics and Comedy from 2023-01-03T09:00
What happens when politics becomes comedy and the jester becomes the king? GuestsEmily Nussbaum, television critic for The New YorkerAvi Steinberg, writer Kwesi Mensah, comedianLearn more about yo...
ListenSquid Game from 2022-07-06T08:00
Kyung Hyun Kim talks about the Netflix series Squid Game, its economic and political contexts, and its cultural potential. He also talks about his new book, Hegemonic Mimicry, out from Duke Univers...
ListenCrosswords from 2022-05-31T08:00
In this episode Kim talks to Adrienne Raphel about crossword puzzles. For lots more about crosswords, check out Adrienne’s book Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling ...
ListenCaridad Svich, "Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (Routledge, 2019 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Routledge, 2019) is Caridad Svich’s love letter to the 1998 musical that introduced the world to its favorite East German ex-pat genderqueer rock sta...
ListenJessica M. Fishman, “Death Makes the News: How the Media Censor and Display the Dead” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, Death Makes the News: How the Media Censor and Display the Dead (NYU Press, 2017), Jessica M. Fishman examines how death is presented in the media. Researching how media outlets presen...
ListenMartin James, "State of Base: The Origins of Jungle/Drum and Bass" (Velocity Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The reissue and revision of Martin James’ State of Bass: The Origins of Jungle/Drum & Bass (Velocity Press, 2020) examines the origins and progression of British Junglism in the 1990s. Rave culture...
ListenMatthew S. Rindge, “Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream” (Baylor UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Material success and prosperity are the aspirational goal for many Americans. The myth of meritocracy embedded in this national ethos has made this dream a civil religion. In Profane Parables: Film...
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...
ListenDaniel Kane, “Do You Have a Band?”: Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Often, poetry and punk rock are seen as distinct activities that occur in different locations with separate audiences. Many would also ascribe to them varying levels of cultural and political capit...
ListenKevin J. Bryne, "Minstrel Traditions: Mediated Blackface in the Jazz Age" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Blackface minstrel show is typically thought of a form tied to the 19th century. While the style was indeed developed during the Antebellum period, its history stretches well into 20th- and eve...
ListenJoel Dinerstein, “The Origins of Cool in Postwar America” (U. Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, The Origins of Cool in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Cultural Studies scholar Joel Dinerstein explores the cultural history of cool and the codes that define...
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, ...
ListenJulia Fawcett, “Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801” (U. Michigan Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“How can the modern individual maintain control over his or her self-representation when the whole world seems to be watching?” This is the question that prompts Julia Fawcett‘s new book, Spectacul...
ListenJustin Gomer, "White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Justin Gomer is the author of White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. White Balance explore...
ListenDeborah Parker and Mark L. Parker, “Sucking Up: A Brief Consideration of Sycophancy” (U. of Virginia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ever since Donald Trump was elected President, he’s created a non-stop torrent of news, so much so that members of the media regularly claim that he’s effectively trashed the traditional news cycle...
ListenThomas Bishop, "Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter" (UMass Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), Thomas Bishop details the remarkable cultural history and personal stories be...
ListenLinda Simon, “Lost Girls: The Invention of the Flapper” (Reaktion Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What are your impressions when you think of the flapper? Who is she in your mind? When and where does she exist? In her new book Lost Girls: The Invention of the Flapper (Reaktion Books, 2017), Li...
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...
ListenDeanne Stillman, “Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill” (Simon & Schuster, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the summer of 1885, the Lakota Sioux holy man Sitting Bull toured North America as a member of Buffalo Bill Cody’s famous “Wild West” show. His participation, as Deanne Stillman explains in her ...
ListenManuel Betancourt, "Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), Manuel Betancourt explores what makes Judy Garland’s landmark album great, and why it holds such a central place in queer cultur...
ListenStephen Pimpare, “Ghettos, Tramps, and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Stephen Pimpare‘s new book, Ghettos, Tramps, and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford University Press, 2017), the reader is encouraged to think about how we portray poverty...
ListenGreil Marcus, “Under the Red White and Blue" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If Jay Gatsby is the embodiment of patriotism, what does that mean for America? Join NBN host Lee Pierce and author Greil Marcus as they take a deep dive into how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vision of th...
ListenShaun Scott, “Millennials and the Moments that Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-Present” (Zero Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Millennials and the Moments that Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-Present (Zero Books, 2018), Shaun Scott critiques the America millennials inherited and using a pop culture len...
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...
ListenNoel Brown, “The Children’s Film: Genre, Nation and Narrative” (Wallflower Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Noel Brown is a film and television scholar at Liverpool Hope University. His research has focused on Hollywood and British cinema (classical and contemporary), family entertainment, children’s cul...
ListenHafsa Lodi,?"Modesty: A Fashion Paradox" (Neem Tree Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Modest fashion is a growing, global multi-billion-dollar market. As a fashion trend, it has increasingly made its way into high-profile runways, has been endorsed by celebrities, and profiled in ma...
ListenGeoff Martin and Erin Steuter, “Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting an Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror” (Lexington Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Two professors from Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada have published a book about how American popular culture reinforces militarism in the United States. In Pop Culture Goes to War...
ListenCreshema R. Murray, "Leadership Through the Lens: Interrogating Production, Presentation, and Power" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Television informs our perceptions and expectations of leaders and offers a guide to understanding how we, as organizational actors, should communicate, act, and relate. Join NBN host Lee Pierce (s...
ListenPatty Farmer, “Starring the Plaza: Hollywood, Broadway, and High Society Visit the World’s Favorite Hotel” (Beaufort Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While many authors write about famous films, actors, or directors, Patty Farmer‘s book–Starring the Plaza: Hollywood, Broadway, and High Society Visit the World’s Favorite Hotel (Beaufort Books, 20...
ListenGrace Elizabeth Hale, "Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture (University of North Carolina Press), Grace Elizabeth Hale tells the epic story of the Athens, Georgia mus...
ListenFiona Helmsley, “Girls Gone Old” (We Heard You Like Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Fiona Helmsley‘s Girls Gone Old (We Heard You Like Books, 2017) is wildly honest, intense in its personal and cultural inquiry, and often brilliantly hilarious. Helmsley uses her keen eye, rich lif...
ListenKennan Ferguson, "Cookbooks Politics" (U Penn Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many of us have stacks of cookbooks on our shelves, which we look through for ideas and inspiration, or to transport us to distant places with different foods, smells, experiences, and sometimes me...
ListenTanya Ann Kennedy, “Historicizing Post-Discourses: Postfeminism and Postracialism in United States Culture” (SUNY Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tanya Ann Kennedy‘s book, Historicizing Post-Discourses: Postfeminism and Postracialism in United States Culture (SUNY Press, 2017), is a complex and important exploration of our collective underst...
ListenGreg Garrett, "A Long, Long Way: Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his powerful new book, A Long, Long Way: Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation (Oxford University Press, 2020), Greg Garrett brings his signature brand of theologically mo...
ListenDon Nunley with Marshall Terrill, “Steve McQueen: Le Mans in the Rearview Mirror” (Dalton Watson, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Steven McQueen was known as a great action star, but he also sometimes had a reputation for being troublesome on the set. Don Nunley worked with him as a prop man on Le Mans, a pet project of McQue...
ListenDavid Slucki et al., "Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust"?(Wayne State UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In?Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust?(Wayne State University Press, 2020), Co-editors?David Slucki, Loti Smorgon Associate Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture at the Australian ...
ListenSophie Egan, “Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are” (William Morrow, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are (William Morrow Books, 2017), food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan takes readers on an eye-opening journey thr...
ListenScott Laderman, "Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing" (U California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since 2020 has been such a horrifying year (and it’s only June!), it would be nice to relax a bit this summer and talk about something fun and apolitical like surfing. After all, what’s more chill ...
ListenIra Dworkin, “Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his 1903 hit “Congo Love Song,” James Weldon Johnson recounts a sweet if seemingly generic romance between two young Africans. While the song’s title may appear consistent with that narrative, i...
ListenJeremy Black, "The World of James Bond: The Lives and Times of 007" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This book by renowned Professor of History Jeremy Black presents an insightful and hugely entertaining exploration of the political and cultural context of the Bond books and films. In The World of...
ListenPatty Farmer, “Playboy Laughs: The Comedy, Comedians, and Cartoons of Playboy” (Beaufort Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Playboy Laughs: The Comedy, Comedians, and Cartoons of Playboy (Beaufort Books, 2017), Patty Farmer examines the relationship between Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire and some of the m...
ListenR. Farrugia and K. D. Hay, "Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (s/t) interviews Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay of Oakland University on their new book Women Rapping Revolution.(University of California P...
ListenFranz Nicolay, “The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar” (The New Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the punk music scene like in Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, or Mongolia? Who listens to punk in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans? What kind of venues host punk shows? Punk mus...
ListenJon Wilkman, "Screening Reality: How Documentary Filmmakers Reimagined America" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Screening Reality: How Documentary Filmmakers Reimagined America (Bloomsbury, 2020) is a widescreen view of how American “truth” has been discovered, defined, projected, televised, and streamed dur...
ListenDavid Kushner, “Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D and D” (Nation Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D and D (Nation Books, 2017) by David Kushner and illustrated by Koren Shadmi is a gorgeous depiction of the late E. Gary Gygax’s life and...
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...
ListenDanny Goldberg, “In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea” (Akashic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea (Akashic Books, 2017), Danny Goldberg explores the political, social, and cultural influences of 1967–a pivotal year in Americ...
ListenKenneth Womack, "Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and The End of The Beatles" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
To what degree did each of The Beatles exhibit emotional intelligence in the band’s final year? You'll find out in the discussion I had with Kenneth Womack about his new book Solid State: The Story...
ListenWilliam Elison, et.al. “Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Amar Akbar Anthony is a film like no other. When you see it you cannot forget it. Filled with music, comedy, drama, and love it captures audiences in multiple ways. But what can we learn from a dee...
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...
ListenMichael Witwer, “Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons and Dragons” (Bloomsbury, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons and Dragons (Bloomsbury, 2015) by Michael Witwer is an exceptional biography of the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, E. Gary Gygax. Wi...
ListenDale Cockrell, "Everybody’s Doin’ It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most books about American music ask how it sounded, who wrote it, or who performed it. In his new book, Everybody’s Doin’ It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917 (Norton, 2019), Dale Cockr...
ListenAndre Sirois, “Hip-Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology: Cultural Exchange, Innovation, and Democratization” (Peter Lang, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the role of the deejay in shaping hip-hop? Did deejays shape the technology that is used to create the music or were they simply consumers of mixers, faders, and microphones? What is the re...
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...
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...
ListenBrian Crim, "Planet Auschwitz: Holocaust Representation in Science Fiction and Horror Film and Television" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Planet Auschwitz: Holocaust Representation in Science Fiction and Horror Film and Television (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Brian Crim explores the diverse ways in which the Hol...
ListenDavid M. Ewalt, “Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and The People Who Play It” (Scribner, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
David M. Ewalt‘s book Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and The People Who Play It (Scribner, 2013) is at once a love letter, cultural history, and succinct analysis of the rolepla...
ListenE. Engelhardt and L. Smith, "The Food We Eat, the Stories We Tell: Contemporary Appalachian Table" (Ohio UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Elizabeth Engelhardt, co-editor of the new collection The Food We Eat, the Stories We Tell: Contemporary Appalachian Tables (Ohio University Press, ...
ListenStanley Corkin, “Connecting the Wire: Race, Space, and Postindustrial Baltimore” (U. Texas Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Critically acclaimed as one of the best television shows ever produced, the HBO series The Wire (2002-2008) is a landmark event in television history, offering a raw and dramatically compelling vis...
ListenAshley Mears, "Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ashley Mears’ new book Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit (Princeton University Press, 2020) provides readers with a closer look at the global party circuit. A lif...
ListenStephen Lee Naish, “Deconstructing Dirty Dancing” (Zero Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When the film was released in 1987, critic Roger Ebert famously panned Dirty Dancing. Yet the movie continues to be the favorite of millions of fans. In Deconstructing Dirty Dancing (Zero Books, 20...
ListenNick Prior, "Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society" (SAGE, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nick Prior—Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Edinburgh—discusses his new book, Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society (SAGE Publications, 2018). The book explores the soci...
ListenJennifer Le Zotte, “From Goodwill to Grunge: A History of Secondhand Styles and Alternative Economies” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In From Goodwill to Grunge: A History of Secondhand Styles and Alternative Economies (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), historian Jennifer Le Zotte examines the movement of selling secondh...
ListenStacy Wolf, "Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode, Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Stacy Wolf of Princeton University about her book Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America (Oxford University Pr...
ListenKate Daloz, “We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a Quest for a New America” (PublicAffairs, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Growing up in a geodesic dome is not a claim everyone can make, but author Kate Daloz can. Her book We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a Quest for a New America (PublicAffairs, 2016) ...
ListenRebecca J. Kissane and Sarah Winslow, "Whose Game?: Gender and Power in Fantasy Sports" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Fantasy sports have the opportunity to provide a sporting community in which gendered physical presence plays no role—a space where men and women can compete and interact on a level playing field. ...
ListenMaya Barzilai, “Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This episode of New Books in Jewish Studies features Maya Barzilai, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Literature and Jewish Culture at the University of Michigan and the author of Golem: Modern Wars an...
ListenJ. Packer and E. Stoneman, "A Feeling of Wrongness: Pessimistic Rhetoric on the Fringes of Popular Culture" (Penn State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode, Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Joe Packer of Central Michigan University about A Feeling of Wrongness: Pessimistic Rhetoric on the Fringes of Popular Culture (Penn State UP, 2019...
ListenKathleen Collins, “Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Kathleen Collins presents an extensive history of the woman who is arguably the most famous tel...
ListenTyler Bickford, "Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture (Duke University Press, 2020), Tyler Bickford explores how the tween music market rose during the mid to late 2000s. Bickford address...
ListenJames A. Cosby, “Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll” (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Do you love Rock and Roll or is Rock and Roll music dead? Are you old enough to have put any money in a jukebox to hear your favorite song, watched American Bandstand, or spent any hours viewing mu...
ListenJames Shapiro, "Shakespeare in a Divided America" (Penguin, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future (Penguin, 2020) renowned Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro turns his attention to the reception of Shakespeare ...
ListenAnna Harwell Celenza, “Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Anna Harwell Celenza examines the arrival of jazz in Italy afte...
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...
ListenMia Mask, “Divas on the Screen: Black Women in American Film” (U. of Illinois Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Five charismatic women navigate uneven terrain of racial gender and class stereotypes: Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Halle Berry. The quintet charisma, as explor...
ListenCaspar Melville, "It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City" (Manchester UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does music help us to understand the contemporary city? In It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City (Manchester UP, 2019), Caspar Melville, co-chair of the ...
ListenSteve Aldous, “The World of Shaft: A Complete Guide to the Novels, Comic Strip, Films and Television Series” (McFarland, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who’s the black private dick That’s a sex machine to all the chicks? (Shaft) Ya damn right Who is the man that would risk his neck For his brother man? (Shaft) Can you dig it? Who’s the cat t...
ListenPeter La Chapelle, "I’d Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Historians, musicologists, and sociologists have long studied the relationship between politics and music. Peter La Chapelle’s new book, I’d Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbi...
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...
ListenJoseph Rex Young, "George R.R. Martin and the Fantasy Form" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“In the game of thrones you either win or you die”––with over 10 million viewers per episode of Game of Thrones, one of the most successful television shows of all time, George R.R. Martin definite...
ListenLaurence A. Rickels, “The Psycho Records” (Wallflower Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Reading Laurence Rickels‘ The Psycho Records (Wallflower Press, 2016) gave me the urge to ask random strangers questions like: Are you haunted by Alfred Hitchcock’s famous shower scene? How do you ...
ListenConor Picken and Matthew Dischinger, "Southern Comforts: Drinking and the US South" (LSU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Conor Picken and Matthew Dischinger about their edited collection, Southern Comforts: Drinking and the US South from Louisiana State University Pres...
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...
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...
ListenGleb Tsipursky, “Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945-1970” (U. Pittsburgh Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945-1970 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) offers a compelling investigation of Soviet leisure cult...
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...
ListenNancy Wang Yuen, “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism” (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How can we challenge the way film and television represents the world around us? In Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (Rutgers University Press, 2017) Nancy Wan Yuen, and Associate Profe...
ListenJoseph Reagle, "Hacking Life: Systematized Living and its Discontents" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Life hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they're feeling on any given day. They share tips on the most efficient ways to tie shoelaces a...
ListenMark Braude, “Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle” (Simon and Schuster, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mark Braude’s Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle (Simon and Schuster, 2016) tells the captivating story of the rise of Monte Carlo as Europe’s most famous casino-resort from...
ListenKunio Hara, "Joe Hisaishi's Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A beloved Japanese anime move released in 1988, My Neighbor Totoro tells the story of two sisters, Satsuki and Mei, as they deal with the separation from their mother who is in the hospital, and th...
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...
ListenKristen Hoerl, "Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements" (UP of Mississippi, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Kristen Hoerl (she/hers) on...
ListenAndre Carrington, “Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Have you ever watched a futuristic movie and wondered if there will actually be any black people in the future? Have you ever been surprised, disappointed, or concerned with the lack of diversity d...
ListenB. J. Hollars, "Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover Country" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For a year, B. J. Hollars traveled the Midwest, or Flyover country as he refers to it, in search of monsters, aliens, and oddities. Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in ...
ListenMick Broderick, “Reconstructing Strangelove: Inside Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Nightmare Comedy'” (WallFlower Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Stanley Kubrick is justly considered one of the greatest filmmakers, even with his limited output over his career. The first film he both produced and directed was Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned...
ListenGreat Books: Hillary Chute on Art Spiegelman's "Maus" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Art Spiegelman's Maus is the story of an American cartoonist's efforts to uncover and record his father's story of survival of the Holocaust. It is also a cartoon, where the Jews are mice, the Naz...
ListenSherilyn Connelly, “Ponyville Confidential: The History and Culture of My Little Pony, 1981-2016” (McFarland, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Ponyville Confidential: The History and Culture of My Little Pony, 1981-2016 (McFarland, 2017), Sherilyn Connelly examines the long and complex history of Hasbro’s My Little Pony franchise. Sinc...
ListenM. Maloney, S. Roberts, and T. Graham, "Gender, Masculinity and Video Gaming: Analysing Reddit’s r/gaming Community" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What can online social spaces like Reddit’s r/gaming reveal about gender attitudes, masculinized spaces, and turning points in gamer communities? In their new book Gender, Masculinity and Video Gam...
ListenBob Moss, “Vibes from the Screen: Getting Greater Enjoyment from Films” (MCP Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While there are many books that assist the viewer in learning how feature films are made, Bob Moss’s Vibes from the Screen: Getting Greater Enjoyment from Films (MCP Books, 2016) is particularly go...
ListenErika Engstrom, "Feminism, Gender, and Politics in NBC’s Parks and Recreation" (Peter Lang, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Erika Engstrom is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her latest book, Feminism, Gender, and Politics in NBC’s Parks and Recreation (Peter Lang, 2017), analyz...
ListenMelissa Hidalgo, “Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands” (Headpress, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands (Headpress, 2016), Melissa Hidalgo examines the world of Morrissey fandom in US-Mexico borderlands. As the frontman of The Smiths, Morrissey is rega...
ListenLynn Neal, "Religion in Vogue: Christianity and Fashion in America" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Christian imagery, symbols, and motifs have long been used and incorporated in fashion. Famous designers such as Coco Chanel, Gianni Versace, and Dolce and Gabbana have made Christianity trendy and...
ListenRichard Etulain, “The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane” (U. Oklahoma Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Calamity Jane was a celebrity of the 19th century American West, yet the woman portrayed in the newspapers and dime novels was one very different from the actual person. In The Life and Legends of ...
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...
ListenMitchel Roth, “Convict Cowboys: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo” (U. North Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For more than 50 years, Huntsville prison put on an annual rodeo throughout the month of October to entertain prisoners, locals, and visitors from across the nation. In his new book Convict Cowboys...
ListenL. Benjamin Rolsky, "The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As someone who grew up watching All in the Family and Sanford and Son, I’ve long been familiar with Norman Lear and his work. What I didn’t know, as a young child sitting cross-legged in front of t...
ListenJames A. Davidson, “Hal Ashby and the Making of Harold and Maude” (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The original script was sold to a major Hollywood studio virtually overnight; the screenwriter was working as a pool boy and driver for the producer; the director was considered an acid freak by th...
ListenRoger Gilles, "Women on the Move: The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle Racing" (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Roger Gilles, Director of the Honors College and Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University, and author of Women on the Move: The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle ...
ListenAnthony Lioi, “Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Anthony Lioi examines literature, film, television, and comics through an ecocritical study of nerd culture....
ListenBlain Roberts, "Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South" (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Professor Blain Roberts of California State University, Fresno, talks about intersections of race, identity, and memory in the South in a wide-ranging discussion that starts in the segregated beaut...
ListenKevin Smokler, “Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to 80s Teen Movies” (Rare Bird Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kevin Smokler’s new book, Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to 80s Teen Movies (Rare Bird Books, 2016)is what everyone in their 40s who loved watching movies as they were growing up wants it to be. ...
ListenKyle Devine, "Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the human and environmental cost of music? In Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music (MIT Press, 2019),Kyle Devine, an Associate Professor in the Department of Musicology at the Univers...
ListenHelen Rappaport, “Victoria: The Heart and Mind of a Young Queen” (Harper Design, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The term historical fiction covers a wide range from what the mystery writer Josephine Tey once dubbed “history with conversation” to outright invention shading into fantasy. But behind every story...
ListenSean Jacobs, "Media in Postapartheid South Africa: Postcolonial Politics in the Age of Globalization" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sean Jacobs, Associate Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City. Jacobs is also the founder and editor of the acclaimed Africa is A Country website, a leader His new bo...
ListenBen Westhhoff, “Original Gangtas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap” (Hachette, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The real story behind the origin of gangsta rap is difficult to discern. Between the bombastic rhetoric and imagery, the larger-than-life characters, and the subsequent success of many of the indiv...
ListenAllison Ochs, "Would I Have Sexted Back in the 80s?" (Amsterdam UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new books, Would I Have Sexted Back in the 80s?: A Modern Guide to Parenting Digital Teens, Derived from Lessons of the Past (Amsterdam University Press, 2019), Allison Ochs combines experie...
ListenCarroll Pursell, “From Playgrounds to PlayStation: The Interaction of Technology and Play” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Carroll Pursell‘s From Playgrounds to PlayStation: The Interaction of Technology and Play (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) explores how play reflects and drives the evolution of American cult...
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...
ListenMatt Houlbrook, “Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook” (U. of Chicago Press 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How should we understand the interwar years in Britain? In Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook (University of Chicago Press, 2016) Matt Houlbrook, Profe...
ListenCarol Dyhouse, "Hearthrobs: A History of Women and Desire" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What can a cultural history of the heartthrob teach us about women, desire, and social change? From dreams of Prince Charming or dashing military heroes, to the lure of dark strangers and vampire l...
ListenGail Ashton, ed. “Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015/2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dilapidated thirteenth-century walls as a playscape for today’s children, medieval relics made as fetish objects for twenty-first century enthusiasts, tourism at “the birthplace of King Arthur,” Ha...
ListenEbony Elizabeth Thomas, "The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the...
ListenBrian Eugenio Herrera, “Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance” (U. Michigan Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2015) Brian Eugenio Herrera examines the way in which Latina/o actors have communicated...
ListenStephen Benedict Dyson, "Imagining Politics: Interpretations in Political Science and Political Television" (U Michigan Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Stephen Dyson has provided a fascinating and engaging analysis of political science, the discipline, and political television in his new book, Imagining Politics: Interpretations in Political Scien...
ListenScott Bruce, ed., “The Penguin Book of the Undead: Fifteen Hundred Years of Supernatural Encounters” (Penguin, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Like so many Americans, I’m a big fan of the undead. I look forward to a night of nail-biting when a new episode of The Walking Dead airs and I get excited when Hollywood gears up for the next big-...
ListenNick Yablon, "Remembrance of Things Present: The Invention of the Time Capsule" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Remembrance of Things Present: The Invention of the Time Capsule (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Nick Yablon traces the birth of the time capsule in the United States. Starting with the Gil...
ListenLeon Wildes, “John Lennon vs The U.S.A.: The Inside Story of the Most Bitterly Contested and Influential Deportation Case in United States History” (Ankerwycke, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Leon Wildes is the author of John Lennon vs The U.S.A.: The Inside Story of the Most Bitterly Contested and Influential Deportation Case in United States History (Ankerwycke 2016). Wildes is an imm...
ListenHillary Reinsberg, "Zagat 2020 New York City Restaurants: Special 40th Anniversary Edition" (Zagat, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The red Zagat guide to restaurants was a fixture to a generation of New York diners before Google bought the brand and stopped publishing copies of the book. In time for the 40th Anniversary, new o...
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...
ListenEvan Friss, "On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Evan Friss, an associate professor of history at James Madison University, historicizes the bicycle’s place in New York City’s social, economic, infrastructural and cultural politics. On Bicycles: ...
ListenClaudia Kalb, “Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Mind of History’s Great Personalities” (Natl Geographic, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
All humans endure their private struggles, but rarely do we know what troubles our most famous public figures until now. In her recent book, Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Mind of History’s ...
ListenAndrea Kitta, "The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore" (Utah State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Disease is a social issue and not just a medical one. This is the central tenet underlying The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore (Utah State University Press 2019) by Andrea Kit...
ListenJonathan Lethem, “A Gambler’s Anatomy” (Doubleday, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jonathan Lethem’s latest novel, A Gambler’s Anatomy (Doubleday, 2016), traces the existential crisis of an international backgammon hustler who thinks he’s psychic and who, while plying his trade i...
ListenJoshua Sperber, "Consumer Management in the Internet Age: How Customers Became Managers in the Modern Workplace" (Lexington, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Consumer Management in the Internet Age: How Customers Became Managers in the Modern Workplace (Lexington Books, 2019), Joshua Sperber analyzes online consumer management, a practice in which cu...
ListenJack Hamilton, “Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2016), Jack Hamilton examines major American and British recording artists of the 1960s to explain what ...
ListenAlison Rowley, "Putin Kitsch in America" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, Putin Kitsch in America (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), Alison Rowley examines the outsized influence that Vladimir Putin, both the man and the myth, have had on US political ...
ListenAlisa Solomon, “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof” (Metropolitan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (Metropolitan, 2013), Alisa Solomon, Director of the Arts and Culture concentration in the MA program at Columbia University’s Gradua...
ListenGabe Logan, "The Early Years of Chicago Soccer, 1887-1939" (Lexington Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The thriving metropolis of Chicago was the land of opportunity for a wide variety of ethnic groups. As individuals from nations where soccer reigned began arriving in the area, they instituted team...
ListenDavid Ensminger, “The Politics of Punk: Protest and Revolt from the Streets” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Punk has long been viewed as a subculture of anger, disruption, and alternative political and lifestyle choices. In The Politics of Punk: Protest and Revolt from the Streets (Rowman and Littlefield...
ListenSimone Knox and Kai Hanno Schwind, "Friends: A Reading of the Sitcom" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What does Friends mean to us now? In Friends: A Reading of the Sitcom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Simone Knox, an Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Theatre, and Television at the Unive...
ListenSali Tagliamonte, “Teen Talk: The Language of Adolescents” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Teenagers get a lot of bad press. Whether it’s how they look, how they dress, the things they say, the way they say it – it sometimes seems as if they can’t get anything right. And when it comes to...
ListenAlexandra D'Arcy, "Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in Context: Eight hundred years of LIKE" (John Benjamins, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Like is a ubiquitous feature of English with a deep history in the language, exhibiting regular and constrained variable grammars over time. Alexandra D'Arcy's book Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in...
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...
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...
ListenDennis Bartok and Jeff Joseph, “A Thousand Cuts: The Bizarre Underground World of Collectors and Dealers Who Saved the Movies ” (U. Press of Mississippi, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While many fans collect all kinds of memorabilia related to their favorite movies, others actually seek out and collect the actual celluloid films. For their book, A Thousand Cuts: The Bizarre Unde...
ListenAnn K. McClellan, "Sherlock’s World: Fan Fiction and the Reimagining of BBC’s Sherlock" (U Iowa Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Sherlock’s World: Fan Fiction and the Reimagining of BBC’s Sherlock (University of Iowa Press, 2018), Ann K. McClellan explores fan fiction inspired by one of the most-watch BBC series in histor...
ListenDavid M. Krueger, “Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What do our myths say about us? Why do we choose to believe stories that have been disproven by science? In Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America (University of Minn...
ListenLincoln A. Mitchell, "San Francisco Year Zero" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
1978 was the year that changed San Francisco forever, writes Lincoln A. Mitchell in San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team (Rutgers University Press,...
ListenAndrew Schulman, “Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul (Picador 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What do the musical compositions of Bach, Gershwin, and the Beatles all have in common? Besides being great pieces of music, according to Andrew Schulman, they promote healing in intensive care (IC...
ListenMark Alizart, "Dogs" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Man’s best friend, domesticated since prehistoric times, a travelling companion for explorers and artists, thinkers and walkers, equally happy curled up by the fire and bounding through the great o...
ListenRobert K. Elder, et. al. “Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park” (Kent State UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Before the war, before the novels, before the four marriages and the safaris, the plane crashes and the bullfighting fascination, Ernest Hemingway was simply a young boy growing up in Oak Park, Ill...
ListenJonathan Rees, "Before the Refrigerator: How We Used to Get Ice" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Frederic Tudor was the “Ice King” of early nineteenth-century America. It was Tudor who realized that ice, harvested from New England ponds and rivers could be shipped to the Caribbean. Shipping wa...
ListenJean Chalaby, “The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution” (Polity, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Television had been transformed by the rise of the format. In The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution Jean Chalaby, Professor of International Communication at City University London,...
ListenLiz Gloyn, "Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is it about ancient monsters that popular culture still finds so enthralling? Why do the monsters of antiquity continue to stride across the modern world? In Tracking Classical Monsters in Pop...
ListenJohn Jodzio, “Knock Out” (Soft Skull Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Jodzio, oft and rightly compared to George Saunders, is lauded by Chuck Klosterman as “the best best kind of modern fiction writer: a thematic traditionalist who feels totally new.” It’s no wo...
ListenJim Clarke, "Science Fiction and Catholicism: The Rise and Fall of the Robot Papacy" (Gylphi, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ah, science fiction: Aliens? Absolutely. Robots? Of course. But why are there so many priests in space? As Jim Clarke writes in Science Fiction and Catholicism: The Rise and Fall of the Robot Papac...
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...
ListenNina Sun Eidsheim, "The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre and Vocality in African American Music" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2018, Nicolle R. Holliday and Daniel Villarreal published the results of a study they conducted asking people to rank how “black” President Obama sounded when given four different examples of hi...
ListenJennifier Keishin Armstrong, “Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything” (Simon and Schuster, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Seinfeld is often referred to as the greatest television show of all time. Although this may be debated, there few who would argue that it holds a prominent place in television history and popular ...
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...
ListenMichelle Cruz Gonzales, “The Spitboy Rule: Tales of Xicana in a Female Punk Band” (PM Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band (PM Press, 2016), Michelle Cruz Gonzales tells her story as a member of a feminist hardcore punk band. The band, Spitboy, e...
ListenAisha Shillingford and Terry Marshall, "Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Re-Imaging Gender in Wakanda" (WDL, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Wakanda Dream Lab’s anthology, Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Re-Imaging Gender in Wakanda, features the work of writers, artists, and activists, as they imagine gender justice through the framework...
ListenSue Matheson, “The Westerns and War Films of John Ford” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While John Ford made films of more general subjects, he is best known for his movies that illustrated the American West and life during wartime. In her book, The Westerns and War Films of John Ford...
ListenAndreas Bernard, "Theory of the Hashtag" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his short book, Theory of the Hashtag (Polity, 2019), Andreas Bernard traces the origins and career of the hashtag. Following the history of the # sign through its origins in the Middle Ages and...
ListenBert Ashe, “Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles” (Agate Bolden, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What’s missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprec...
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...
ListenEd Berlin, “King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Few composers dominate a genre of music as completely as did Scott Joplin. From the publication of his iconic Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 onward his ragtime compositions came to serve as the soundtrack ...
ListenNoah Cohan, "We Average Unbeautiful Watchers: Fan Narratives and the Reading of American Sport" (U Nebraska, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Noah Cohan, Lecturer in American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and the author of We Average Unbeautiful Watchers: Fan Narratives and the Reading of A...
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...
ListenRafia Zafar, "Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Rafia Zafar about her 2019 book Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning, from the University of Georgia Press. It’s part of the ...
ListenYago Colas, “Ball Don’t Lie! Myth, Genealogy and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball” (Temple University Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Leading up to this year’s NBA Finals, sports media outlets offered their take on the most important storylines of the series between the Cavaliers and Warriors. Who will claim his place as the game...
ListenLucas Richert, “Strange Trips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drugs” (McGill-Queens UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Strange Trips isn’t only the title of Dr. Lucas Richert’s new book; it’s also a good description of the journey substances take from the black market to the doctor’s black bag—and, sometimes, back ...
ListenCass Sunstein, “The World According to Star Wars” (Harper Collins, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Cass Sunstein‘s son, Declan, got dad hooked on Star Wars. And dad, a Harvard Law professor, ended up writing a book about it. “If you’d told me a year ago that I’d write a book about Star Wars,” Su...
ListenJennifer Jensen Wallach, "What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped African American Life" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Jennifer Jensen Wallach about the her book Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped African American Life (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019...
ListenBeineke and Rosenhouse, eds., “The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects: Research in Recreational Math” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jennifer Beineke and Jason Rosenhouse‘s new book The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects: Research in Recreational Math (Princeton University Press, 2015) covers a multitude of topics and ...
ListenEmily Dufton, "Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America" (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Marijuana. Weed. Cannabis. Pot. Whatever term you use, this intoxicant and medical product leads to long discussions. Emily Dufton visits the podcast to talk about the ups and downs and highs and l...
ListenBrooke Hauser, “Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Women’s history, if they had any, consisted in their being beautiful enough to become events in male lives,” the feminist academic Carolyn R. Heilbrun noted in a series of 1997 lectures, suggestin...
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...
ListenJoshua Braun, “This Program is Brought to You By . . . Distributing Television Online” (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“One of the things that was most shocking to me getting into the media business, an MSNBC.com producer tells Josh Braun, was the realization that regular people were making it. Television to me . ....
ListenSuzanne Scott, "Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Suzanne Scott’s new book Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry (NYU Press, 2019) provides an overview of the convergence culture industry and the world of fandom whi...
ListenBrian James DeMare, “Mao’s Cultural Army: Drama Troupes in Chinas Rural Revolution” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Chinese Revolution was a profoundly theatrical event. Brian James DeMare’s new book explores the relationship between drama and political action in China, from the earliest era of communist Red...
ListenCarol J. Adams, "Burger" (Bloomsbury, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Carol J. Adams about two new books: Burger, from the Object Lessons series by Bloomsbury (2018), and Protest Kitchen, a cookbook with over 50 ve...
ListenDoug Bradley and Craig Werner, “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War” (U of Massachusetts Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the “Ballad of the Green Berets” to “Bad Moon Rising,” the music of the Vietnam War is woven through every vets memories. Vietnam vet Doug Bradley and his fellow University of Wisconsin profes...
ListenMike Jay, "Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Psychedelics are not terribly new. And the drug mescaline is certainly not new. Mike Jay's new book, Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic (Yale University Press, 2019), tells two tr...
ListenRoger Horowitz, “Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food (Columbia University Press, 2016), Roger Horowitz, director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society a...
ListenWilliam Gibbons, "Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Video games are a significant part of popular entertainment in the twenty-first century. From Words with Friends to Grand Theft Auto, most people spend at least some of their leisure time with vide...
ListenHarlan Lebo, “Citizen Kane: A Filmmakers Journey” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Considered by many to be the greatest American film ever made, Citizen Kane was the product of Orson Welles, who made a movie that is still groundbreaking today. In his new book Citizen Kane: A Fil...
ListenKrishnendu Ray, "The Ethnic Restaurateur" (Bloomsbury, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Academic discussions of ethnic food have tended to focus on the attitudes of consumers, rather than the creators and producers. In this ground-breaking new book, The Ethnic Restaurateur (Bloomsbury...
ListenJason Mittell, “Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television” (NYU Press 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We are said to be in a golden age of TV. The best stories today are told on television screens in serialized forms. The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos are a few of the shows that have eleva...
ListenHoward Philips Smith, "Unveiling the Muse: The Lost History of Gay Carnival in New Orleans" (UP of Mississippi, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Howard Philips Smith has been investigating and writing about the gay history of New Orleans for over two decades. Raised on a small farm in rural Southern Mississippi, he studied French literature...
ListenAlfie Bown, “Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism” (Zero Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is enjoyment and what can contemporary critical theory tell us about it? In Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism (Zero Books, 2015), Alfie Bown, a lecturer at Hang Seng Management College a...
ListenDavid Resnick, "Representing Education In Film: How Hollywood Portrays Educational Thought, Settings and Issues" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
David Resnick combines two of his passions, movies and education, in his book, Representing Education In Film: How Hollywood Portrays Educational Thought, Settings and Issues (Palgrave Macmillan, 2...
ListenKimberly Fain, “Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies” (Praeger, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While black men have been portrayed in film for over a hundred years, they have often been stereotyped or portrayed very badly. In her book Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changin...
ListenVicki Howard, "From Main Street to Mall: The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This week we take a break from fun and games to talk about business and consumerism–which, to be sure, is for some people also fun and games. As Vicki Howard reminds us in her new book, From Main S...
ListenRoshanak Kheshti, “Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The origins of world music can be found in early ethnographic recordings as anthropologists and ethnomusicologists sought to record the songs of lost or dying cultures. In Modernity’s Ear: Listenin...
ListenTricia Starks, "Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks explores these themes as well as the connections ...
ListenAdam Kucharski, “The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling” (Basic Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Adam Kucharski, who won the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, has delivered another winner in an area rife with both winners and losers. The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking th...
ListenEmilie Le Beau Lucchesi, "This Is Really War: The Incredible True Story of a Navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines" (Chicago Review Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, This Is Really War: The Incredible True Story of a Navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines (Chicago Review Press, 2019), Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi presents the largely unknown sto...
ListenPhillip Penix-Tadsen, “Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America” (MIT Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Symbols have meanings that change depending upon the cultural context. But how do we discuss symbols, their meanings, and their cultural contexts without an adequate vocabulary? Phillip Penix-Tadse...
ListenAnn Powers, "Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music" (Dey St. Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music (Dey St. Books, HarperCollins, 2017), Ann Powers explores the rich and, at times, unexpected intersections of love, sex...
ListenJ. Gondelman and J. Berkowitz, “You Blew It! An Awkward Look at the Many Ways in Which You’ve Already Ruined Your Life” (Penguin, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Looking for a cheery, encouraging guide to improving your life? A reminder that nothing is really all that bad, and you can still pick yourself up and make a big success of yourself? Look elsewhere...
ListenSusan Brownell, "The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As my first guest, I’d would like to introduce Susan Brownell, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri – St Louis, one of the authors of The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, ...
ListenJames Nott, “Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918-1960” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918-1960 (Oxford University Press, 2016), cultural historian James Nott charts the untold ...
ListenKerry Eggers, "Jail Blazers: How the Portland Trail Blazers Became the Bad Boys of Basketball" (Sport Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, the Portland Trail Blazers were one of the hottest teams in the NBA. For almost a decade, they won 60 percent of their games while making it to the Western Confere...
ListenAlan Sepinwall, “The Revolution Was Televised” (Touchstone, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What do Tony Soprano and Archie Bunker have in common? Alan Sepinwall, longtime TV writer and critic, knows that the 1970s comedic bigot and 2000s Jersey mob boss are not as different as we may thi...
ListenTanisha C. Ford, "Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl's Love Letter to the Power of Fashion" (St. Martins Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this highly engaging book, fashionista and pop culture expert Tanisha C. Ford investigates Afros and dashikis, go-go boots and hotpants of the sixties, hip hop's baggy jeans and bamboo earrings,...
ListenMaris Kreisman, “Slaughterhouse 90210: Where Great Books Meet Pop Culture” (Flatiron Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The concept sounds simple: Maris Kreizman‘s Slaughterhouse 90210: Where Great Books Meet Pop Culture (Flatiron Books, 2015), based on her popular Tumblr, pairs up classic celebrity and television i...
ListenLynn Downey, "Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World" (U Massachusetts Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nearly every consumer today is familiar with the name Levi Strauss thank to the jeans that bear his name. As Lynn Downey explains in her book Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World ...
ListenYael Raviv, “Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel” (University of Nebraska Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late nineteenth century, Jewish immigrants inspired by Zionism began to settle in Palestine. Their goal was not only to establish a politically sovereign state, but also to create a new, mod...
ListenDiana Pasulka, "American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
More than half of American adults and more than seventy-five percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. In American ...
ListenNahuel Ribke, “A Genre Approach to Celebrity Politics” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From Ronald Reagan through Gilberto Gil to Donald Trump, our media channels are filled with celebrities vying for the highest political posts. In A Genre Approach to Celebrity Studies (Palgrave Mac...
ListenStephen Hardy and Andrew Holman, "Hockey: A Global History" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Stephen Hardy, retired professor of kinesiology and affiliate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, and Andrew Holman, professor of history at and the dire...
ListenJohn McMillian, “Beatles vs. Stones” (Simon and Schuster, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John McMillian‘s Beatles vs. Stones (Simon and Schuster, 2013) presents a compelling composite biography of the two seminal bands of the 1960s, examining both the myth-making and reality behind the...
ListenM. D. Foster and J. A. Tolbert, "The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World" (Utah State UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This volume introduces a new concept to explore the dynamic relationship between folklore and popular culture: the "folkloresque." With "folkloresque," Foster and Tolbert name the product created w...
ListenChristina Dunbar-Hester, “Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism” (MIT Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For the past few decades a major focus has been how the Internet, and Internet associated new media, allows for greater social and political participation globally. There is no disputing that the I...
ListenChristopher Rea, "China's Chaplin: Comic Stories and Farces by Xu Zhuodai" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Hoaxes! Jokes! Farces and fun! Cristopher Rea's China’s Chaplin (Cornell University Press, 2019) introduces the imagination of Xu Zhuodai (1880–1958), a comic dynamo who made Shanghai laugh through...
ListenClare Haru Crowston, “Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anyone who’s been paying attention to the flurry around the French economist Thomas Piketty’s 2013 Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century (Le Capital au XXIe siecle) knows how a la mode the econom...
ListenAmanda Littauer, "Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties" (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her innovative and revealing study of midcentury American sex and culture, Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), Amanda Litta...
ListenDavid Konow, “Reel Terror: The Scary, Bloody, Gory, Hundred-Year History of Classic Horror Films” (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Filmmakers discovered in the early twentieth century that Americans would gladly pay to be scared to death. As the decades marched on, dismissive critics regularly wrote obituaries for the relentle...
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...
ListenAllen Salkin “From Scratch: Inside the Food Network” (Putnam, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I was growing up the only cooking show on TV I remember was Julia Child. I sometimes watched “The French Chef,” not so much to learn anything about cooking, but rather just to watch Julia. She...
ListenJeanette M. Fregulia, "A Rich and Tantalizing Brew: A History of How Coffee Connected the World" (U Arkansas Press, 2019)) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Jeanette M. Fregulia about the movements of coffee beans, coffee drinking, and coffee houses from Ethiopia and Yemen, across the Mediterranean regio...
ListenRichie Unterberger, “Won’t Get Fooled Again: The Who from Lifehouse to Quadrophenia” (Jawbone, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Between 1969 and 1973, the Who hit their commercial and creative peak. The legendary English quartet produced three Billboard Top Ten albums, including two double LP “rock operas,” Tommy (1969) and...
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...
ListenJonathan Green, “Green’s Dictionary of Slang” (Hodder Education, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Over the last thirty years, Jonathon Green has established himself as a major figure in lexicography, specialising in English slang. During this time he has accumulated a database of over half a mi...
ListenGregory H. Wolf, "Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison" (SABR, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Wrigley Field is one of a handful of sports stadiums to have transcended its athletic purpose to become a true American landmark. Nestled in its neighborhood on the north side of Chicago, the park ...
ListenSheree Homer, “Catch that Rockabilly Fever: Personal Stories of Life on the Road and in the Studio” (McFarland, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“On July 5, 1954, Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black forever changed musical history,” writes Sheree Homer in Catch that Rockabilly Fever: Personal Stories of Life on the Road and in the S...
ListenAmos Mac and Rocco Kayiatos, "Original Plumbing: The Best of Ten Years of Trans Male Culture" (Amethyst Editions, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Amos Mac and Rocco Kayiatos first launch Original Plumbing in 2009, they created a magazine the world desperately needed: a creative and celebratory biannual publication about trans men, by tr...
ListenPeter Filichia, “Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season 1959-2009” (Applause, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Speaking to long time theater critic Peter Filichia, one is reminded of listening to an old-time sportwriter talk about baseball. The Broadway he describes is full of colorful personalities, anecdo...
ListenStephen R. Duncan, "The Rebel Café: Sex, Race, and Politics in Cold War America’s Nightclub Underground" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The art and antics of rebellious figures in 1950s American nightlife?from the Beat Generation to eccentric jazz musicians and comedians?have long fascinated fans and scholars alike. In The Rebel Ca...
ListenAnne A. Cheng, "Ornamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--Dr. Anne Cheng (she/hers)--Professor of English and Director of...
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...
ListenEmily Wilcox, "Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is “Chinese dance,” how did it take shape in during China’s socialist period, and how has this socialist form continued to influence Post-Mao expressive cultures in the People’s Republic of Ch...
ListenKara Ritzheimer, "'Trash,' Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany" (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Convinced that sexual immorality and unstable gender norms were endangering national recovery after World War One, German lawmakers drafted a constitution in 1919 legalizing the censorship of movie...
ListenSara K. Eskridge, "Rube Tube: CBS and Rural Comedy in the Sixties" (U Missouri Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The television comedies of the 1960s set in the American South epitomize American innocence. But in their original historical, social, and commercial context, their portrayals of southern life and ...
ListenE. Douglas Bomberger, "Making Music American: 1917 and the Transformation of Culture" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There has been a recent trend in books that explore one year in detail: 1914, 1927, and 1968 have all received this treatment. E. Douglas Bomberger’s new book Making Music American: 1917 and the Tr...
ListenClare Daniel, "Mediating Morality: The Politics of Teen Pregnancy in the Post-Welfare Era" (U Massachusetts Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Dr. Clare Daniel (she/hers)--Administrative Assistan...
ListenBrian Cremins, "Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia" (UP of Mississippi, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Cremins' book Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) explores the history of Billy Batson, a boy who met a wizard that allowed him to transform into a...
ListenJennifer Helgren, "American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War" (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War (Rutgers University Press, 2017), Jennifer Helgren traces the creation of a new internat...
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...
ListenMark D. White, "Batman and Ethics" (Wiley Blackwell, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mark D. White's new book Batman and Ethics (Wiley Blackwell, 2019) focuses on the comic book character Batman, particularly from the early 1970s through 2011, exploring Batman’s motivations, his mi...
ListenJerry T. Watkins III, "Queering the Redneck Riviera: Sexuality and the Rise of Florida Tourism" (UP of Florida, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the title suggests, Jerry T. Watkins III’s Queering the Redneck Riviera: Sexuality and the Rise of Florida Tourism (University Press of Florida, 2018) re-queers this North Florida tourist destin...
ListenSarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of my talking points when hanging out with my fellow diplomatic historians is the painful absence of scholarship on Hawaii. Too many political histories treat Hawaii’s statehood as a kind of hi...
ListenDan Golding, "Star Wars after Lucas: A Critical Guide to the Future of the Galaxy" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2012 George Lucas shocked the entertainment world by selling the Star Wars franchise, along with Lucasfilm, to Disney. This is the story of how, over the next five years, Star Wars went from nea...
ListenNicholas Baer et al. "Unwatchable" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We all have images that we find unwatchable, whether for ethical, political, or sensory and affective reasons. Yet what does it mean to proclaim something “unwatchable”: disturbing, revolting, poor...
ListenFernando Orejuela and Stephanie Shonekan, "Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Music has always been integral to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, with songs such as Kendrick Lamar’s "Alright," J. Cole’s "Be Free," D’Angelo and the Vanguard's "The Charade,...
ListenCrystal Abidin, "Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online" (Emerald Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What does it mean to be famous on the Internet? How do people become Internet celebrities, and what can that celebrity be used to do? Dr. Crystal Abidin offers anthropological insight into these qu...
ListenVivi Lachs, "Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London, 1884-1914" (Wayne State UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London, 1884-1914 (Wayne State University Press, 2018), Vivi Lachs, social and cultural historian, Yiddishist, performer, and ...
ListenEliot Borenstein, "Plots Against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, conspiratorial thinking has taken deep root in contemporary Russia, moving from the margins to the forefront of cultural, historical, and political dis...
ListenNancy Yunhwa Rao, "Chinatown Opera Theater in North America" (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The story of popular entertainment in American immigrant communities is only just beginning to be told. Chinatown Opera Theater in North America by Nancy Yunhwa Rao from University of Illinois Pres...
ListenRacquel J. Gates, "Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Racquel J. Gates’ new book, Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2018), interrogates understandings of African-American representations on screen. This book...
ListenRon Keurajian, "Baseball Hall of Fame Autographs: A Reference Guide" (McFarland, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Ron Keurajian, author of the book Baseball Hall of Fame Autographs: A Reference Guide (Second Edition)(McFarland, 2018). Keurajian is a commercial banker by trade but has spe...
ListenMichael Mario Albrecht, "Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television" (Routledge, 2015) 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. Michael Mario Albrecht (he/his)--to discuss a sweeping exploration of ma...
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...
ListenClaire Pamment, "Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bh?nd" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Claire Pamment’s book Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bh?nd (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) is a fantastic new book centered on the Punjabi folk art of the Bh?nd, or comic performance. Pamment explor...
ListenSuk-Young Kim, "K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Given its expanding multimedia presence in Asia and around the world for many years now, K-pop is a phenomenon that is hard to ignore. This “animal that thrives on excess,” as Suk-Young Kim puts it...
ListenAmit Pinchevski, "Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Mediation of Trauma" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What does it mean to consider trauma and media from the perspective of technology and not from that of the subject of trauma, the clinician or the witness? In Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Medi...
ListenReece Peck, "Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Reece Peck's Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class (Cambridge University Press, 2019) offers a unique argument of why the Fox News Channel has been both a commercial successful and w...
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...
ListenJeffrey D. Long, "Perspectives on Reincarnation: Hindu, Christian, Scientific" (MDPI Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What happens after you die? The book brings together fascinating theological and religious studies perspectives on a controversial yet pervasive idea: reincarnation. An estimated 1 on 5 Americans s...
ListenJacob Johanssen, "Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How can insights from psychoanalysis help us understand digital culture? in Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data (Routledge, 2018), Jacob Johanssen, a senior le...
ListenBernadete Barton, "Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers" (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Women get into stripping for money, writes Dr. Bernadete Barton, and the experience the girls have throughout their career in exotic dancing varies. Dr. Barton uses Stripped: More Stories from Exot...
ListenBradford Vivian, "Commonplace Witnessing: Rhetorical Invention, Historical Remembrance, and Public Culture" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of New Books in Communications, Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Dr. Bradford Vivian (he/his) of Penn State University on his fabulous new book Commonplace Witnessing: Rhetorical In...
ListenKendall Phillips, "A Place of Darkness: The Rhetoric of Horror in Early American Cinema" (U Texas, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Dr. Kendall Phillips (he) of Syracuse University on his fabulous new book A Place of Darkness: The Rhetoric of Horror in E...
ListenW. K. Stratton, "The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film" (Bloomsbury, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On June 18, 1969, "The Wild Bunch" premiered to critical success. Over the past 50 years it has been rightly recognized as one of the landmark films from the end of the Hollywood studio system. Yet...
ListenNathan Holmes, "Welcome to Fear City: Crime Film, Crisis, and the Urban Imagination" (SUNY Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The so-called Urban Crisis of the 1970s continues to loom large in narratives of US urban politics and history, but what can we learn about the period from movies? In Welcome to Fear City: Crime Fi...
ListenPeter Hopsicker and Mark Dyreson, "A Half Century of Super Bowls: National and Global Perspectives on America's Grandest Spectacle" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Super Bowl is a singular spectacle in American culture. More than just a championship football game, the Super Bowl has become an unparalleled display of nationalism, consumerism, and culture. ...
ListenDavid J. Puglia, "Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore 'Hon': The Folk in the City" (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Folklorist David J. Puglia is an assistant professor at the City University of New York and in his latest book - Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore “Hon": The Folk in the City (Lexington ...
ListenKatie Beswick, "Social Housing In Performance: The English Council Estate On and Off Stage" (Methuen Drama, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How has the council estate been represented on stage? In Social Housing In Performance: The English Council Estate On and Off Stage (Methuen Drama, 2018), Dr. Katie Beswick, a lecturer in drama at...
ListenTim Mohr, "Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall" (Algonquin Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Algonquin Books, 2018), Tim Mohr examines East Germany punk rock and its role in the collapse of the East German di...
ListenJoe Street, "Dirty Harry’s America: Clint Eastwood, Harry Callahan, and the Conservative Backlash" (UP of Florida, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When "Dirty Harry" first premiered in 1971, it was both praised and condemned for its portrayal of a rogue policeman fighting crime by ignoring many of the rules and procedures of the profession. Y...
ListenDavid LaRocca, "The Philosophy of War Films" (U Press of Kentucky, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Films that feature war as a theme have been made almost since the beginning of the industry. In The Philosophy of War Films (University Press of Kentucky, 2018), part of the "Philosophy of Popular ...
ListenChristian B. Long, "The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema 1960-2000" (Intellect, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While most every live-action film takes place in a specific location, the role of these places has not often been studied. In his new book The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema 1960-2000 (Int...
ListenKatherine K. Preston, "Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Katherine Preston’s new book, Opera for the People: English-Language Opera & Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2017) is the first complete overview of the repert...
ListenMargot Finn, "Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution" (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
You eat what you are and are what you eat, right? There is an increasing number of Americans who pay great attention to the food they eat, buy organic vegetables, drink fine wines, and seek out exo...
ListenVictoria Cann, "Girls Like This, Boys Like That: Understanding the (Re)Production of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures" (I.B.Tauris, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does cultural taste regulate our lives? In Girls Like This, Boys Like That: Understanding the (Re)Production of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Dr. Victoria Cann, a l...
ListenTison Pugh, "The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Perhaps no form of popular art has appeared as poised to resist subversive sexual themes as the television situation comedy. But Tison Pugh writes that the sitcom’s historic dogmatic insistence on ...
ListenPatrick B. Mullen, "Right to the Juke Joint: A Personal History of American Music" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On its back cover, Patrick B. Mullen’s Right to the Juke Joint: A Personal History of American Music(University of Illinois Press, 2018) is aptly described as “part scholar's musings and part fan's...
ListenSarah Banet-Weiser, "Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the relationship between popular misogyny and popular feminism? In Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny(Duke University Press, 2018), Sarah Banet-Weiser, Professor of Media and ...
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...
ListenJulian Meyrick, Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett, "What Matters?: Talking Value in Australian Culture" (Monash UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How should we value culture? In What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture (Monash University Press, 2018), Professors Julian Meyrick, Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett, from Flinders Univer...
ListenJohn C. Hajduk, "Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960" (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960(Lexington Books, 2018), John C. Hajduk examines the emergence of a “rock and roll cultu...
ListenDavid Charles Sloane, "Is the Cemetery Dead?" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is certain that we all will experience death in our life. What is less certain is how and where our bodies will be disposed of. In Is the Cemetery Dead? (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Dr. ...
ListenJack David Eller, “Inventing American Tradition: From the Mayflower to Cinco de Mayo” (Reaktion Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Americans gathering for Thanksgiving this week may assume they are continuing an unbroken chain of tradition that traces directly back to Massachusetts settlers in 1620. In fact, many of our most c...
ListenAlicia Malone, “The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made by Women” (Mango Publishing Group, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we will be talking to Alicia Malone, the author of The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made by Women (Mango Publishing Group, 2018). Malone is a film critic and host on Turner Classic Films who...
ListenChris Horrocks, “The Joy of Sets: A Short History of the Television” (Reaktion Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Television started as a dream of nineteenth-century science fiction. It took its place in the twentieth-century home, and became a fixture of family life and a transformative cultural force. Today,...
ListenCairns Craig, “The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence” (Edinburgh UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Professor Cairns Craig’s new book, The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), which has been shortlisted for the Saltire History Book of the Ye...
ListenR. C. Romano and C. B. Potter, “Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past” (Rutgers UP, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (Rutgers University Press, 2018), edited by Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, is a collection of essays about Lin...
ListenRaymond Boyle, “The Talent Industry: Television, Cultural Intermediaries and New Digital Pathways” (Palgrave, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What are the hidden structures of the television industry? In The Talent Industry: Television, Cultural Intermediaries and New Digital Pathways (Palgrave, 2018), Raymond Boyle, a professor of commu...
ListenZachary Lechner, “The South of the Mind: American Imaginings of White Southernness, 1960–1980” (U Georgia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When talking about the American South in the second half of the twentieth century, popular discourse tended to fall into one of three camps (on occasion, two might coexist simultaneously): the “Vic...
ListenAnthony Slide, “Magnificent Obsession: The Outrageous History of Film Buffs, Collectors, Scholars, and Fanatics” (UP of Mississippi, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the major aspects of the popular film industry are the fans who want to collect material related to their favorite films, actors, and actresses. While this has become generally easier in the...
ListenJames S. Bielo, “Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park (NYU Press, 2018), James Bielo, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Miami University, goes behind the scenes at Grant Count...
ListenMelissa Terras, “Picture-Book Professors: Academia and Children’s Literature” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How have academics been represented in children’s books? In Picture-Book Professors: Academia and Children’s Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Cult...
ListenKathryn Fuller-Seeley, “Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy” (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jack Benny was one of the first crossover stars in broadcast comedy, rising from the vaudeville circuit to star in radio, film, and television. Kathryn Fuller-Seeley chronicles Benny’s career in he...
ListenJeffrey Kahan, “Shakespeare and Superheroes” (ARC Humanities Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What do Shakespeare and superheroes have in common? A penchant for lycra and capes? A flair for the dramatic? Well, according to Shakespeare scholar, English Professor and comic-book fan Jeffrey Ka...
ListenRobert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark, “The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music (Oxford University Press, 2018), editors Robert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark curate a wide-ranging collection of essays abou...
ListenTim Jelfs, “The Argument about Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism” (West Virginia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Argument about Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism (West Virginia University Press, 2018), Tim Jelfs argues that debates about the nature of stuff—its moral val...
ListenDeborah Jaramillo, “The Television Code: Regulating the Screen to Safeguard the Industry” (U Texas Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you watch old movies or study film history, you may know that early 20th-century Hollywood operated under the Motion Picture Production Code, which dictated what could and couldn’t be portrayed ...
ListenJonathan Waterlow, “It’s Only a Joke, Comrade! Humour, Trust and Everyday Life Under Stalin (1928-1941)” (CreateSpace, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jonathan Waterlow’s new book It’s Only a Joke, Comrade! Humour, Trust and Everyday Life Under Stalin (1928-1941) (CreateSpace, 2018) delves into the previously understudied realm of humor in the St...
ListenJoel R. Pruce, “The Mass Appeal of Human Rights” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How can human rights campaigns function in consumer and celebrity society? In The Mass Appeal of Human Rights (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Joel Pruce, assistant professor in political science at the...
ListenStephen Lee Naish, “Riffs & Meaning: Manic Street Preachers and Know Your Enemy” (Headpress, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Riffs & Meaning: Manic Street Preachers and Know Your Enemy (Headpress, 2018), Stephen Lee Naish tells the story of Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers’ 2001 album Know Your Enemy. The record...
ListenTessa Fontaine, “The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts” (FSG, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who doesn’t remember their first trip to the county fair? The greasy hotdogs and popcorn and cotton candy. The lights and sounds of the seemingly endless games and rides and shows on the midway. Bu...
ListenBecky Aikman, “Off the Cliff: How the Making of ‘Thelma & Louise’ Drove Hollywood to the Edge” (Penguin, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Off the Cliff: How the Making of ‘Thelma & Louise’ Drove Hollywood to the Edge (Penguin, 2018), Becky Aikman explores the making of Thelma & Louise, a 1991 film that challenged traditional Holly...
ListenJames P. Leary, “Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946” (U Wisconsin Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946 (University of Wisconsin Press) first appeared in 2015 when it comprised of a hardback book, five CDs, and one DVD. ...
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 ...
ListenMegan Condis, “Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Battle for Online Culture” (U Iowa Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gaming has increasingly become part of mainstream culture, from the continued rise of console and PC gaming to the emergence of eSports. Gaming culture has also come under more scrutiny to the non-...
ListenBen Blackwell, “The Blue Series: The Story Behind the Color” (Third Man Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Blue Series: The Story Behind the Color (Third Man Books, 2017), Ben Blackwell invites readers behind the scenes for the making of Third Man Records’ 7-inch single Blue Series. Founded in 20...
ListenRichard Ivan Jobs, “Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ever go backpacking through Europe? In Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Richard Ivan Jobs traces the postwar cultural history of the mak...
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...
ListenMartin Shuster, “New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How should we understand our new golden age of television? In New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Martin Shuster, Director of Judaic Studies ...
ListenChris Nashawaty, “Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story” (Flatiron Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of a new type of humor, based on sarcasm, improvisation and drugs. From The National Lampoon to Saturday Night Live, many new stars appeared, both as performers and...
ListenAdrienne Rose Bitar, “Diet and the Disease of Civilization” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Diet books are a multi-billion dollar industry and in Diet and the Disease of Civilization (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Adrienne Rose Bitar explores the narratives of those books. Bitar looks ...
ListenPhil Proctor and Brad Shreiber, “Where’s my Fortune Cookie?” (Blurb, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Firesign Theatre co-founder Phil Proctor shares stories from his life and career in his new memoir, Where’s My Fortune Cookie? (Blurb, 2017) co-written with Brad Shreiber. In Where’s My Fortune Coo...
ListenRebekah J. Buchanan, “Writing a Riot: Riot Grrrl Zines and Feminist Rhetorics” (Peter Lang, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1989, Time magazine pronounced “Feminism is dead.” It seemed to mainstream culture that the conservative era, marked by Regan and Thatcher, had killed the lingering energy that began with the ri...
ListenGary Bruce, “Through the Lion Gate: A History of the Berlin Zoo” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Through the Lion Gate: A History of the Berlin Zoo (Oxford University Press, 2017), Gary Bruce, professor of history at the University of Waterloo, provides the first English-langu...
ListenM. L. Liebler, “Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond” (Wayne State UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond (Wayne State University Press, 2016), M. L. Liebler curates an exhaustive collection of essays about Detroit music by a diverse group of music...
ListenM.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, “History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), historian M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska examines Americans’ changing relationship to hist...
ListenNatalie Robins, “The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling (Columbia University Press, 2017), Natalie Robins examines the life of writer and socialite Diana Trilling (1905-1996). Trilling wrot...
ListenSandra Jean Graham, “Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What happened in popular entertainment when African Americans could access the stage after the Civil War? In Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry (University of Illinois Press...
ListenYaron Peleg, “Directed by God: Jewishness in Contemporary Israeli Film and Television” (University of Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As part of its effort to forge a new secular Jewish nation, the nascent Israeli state tried to limit Jewish religiosity. However, with the steady growth of the ultraorthodox community and the expan...
ListenJames Cook, “Memory Songs: A Personal Journey into the Music that Shaped the 90s” (Unbound, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today on the New Books in Music podcast James Cook discuses his book, Memory Songs: A Personal Journey into the Music that Shaped the 90s (Unbound, 2018). The book details the author’s own adolesce...
ListenCharles Hughes, “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As America changed in the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the Southern music industry was changing as well. The music studios of Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals–known as the “country-soul ...
ListenMichael Ramirez, “Destined for Greatness: Passions, Dreams, and Aspirations in a College Music Town” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The pursuit of a musical career crosses the mind of most children. But, for most, a vocation is nothing more than a farfetched fantasy that will never come true. Music is often considered more appr...
ListenPeter Hoar, “The World’s Din: Listening to Records, Radio and Films in New Zealand 1880–1940” (Otago University Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, The World’s Din: Listening to Records, Radio and Films in New Zealand 1880–1940 (Otago University Press, 2018), Peter Hoar, a senior lecturer in radio and media history at Auckland...
ListenGillian M. Rodger, “Just One of the Boys: Female-to-Male Cross-Dressing on the American Variety Stage” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the 1870s, one of the most popular forms of entertainment attended by American working-class men was variety—a succession of unrelated bawdy acts that preceded its tamer later nineteenth-century...
ListenDiscussion with Dahlia Schweitzer (“Going Viral”) and Rob Thomas (“Veronica Mars”) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Follow-up interviews are always fun. Listen to my follow-up interview with Dahlia Schweitzer, author of Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World (Rutgers University Press, 2018). I t...
ListenSophia Rose Arjana, “Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Popular Culture” (Lexington Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Popular Culture (Lexington Books, 2017) by Sophia Rose Arjana (with Kim Fox), takes us on a riveting journey through the world of superheroes and villains f...
ListenGregory Snyder, “Skateboarding LA: Inside Professional Street Skateboarding” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Gregory Snyder, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY), and author of Skateboarding LA: Inside Professional Street Skateboa...
ListenJesse Berrett, “Pigskin Nation: How the NFL Remade American Politics” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Jesse Berrett, author of Pigskin Nation: How the NFL Remade American Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2018). Berrett is a high school history teacher at University Hig...
ListenMark A. McCutcheon, “The Medium Is the Monster: Canadian Adaptations of Frankenstein and the Discourse of Technology” (Athabasca UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What do Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Canadian popular culture have in common? This is the question that Mark A. McCutcheon seeks to answer in his new book, The M...
ListenEmilie Lucchesi, “Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Jazz-Age Chicago” (Chicago Review, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Jazz Age Chicago (Chicago Review Press, 2017), Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi presents the story of Sabella Nitti, an Ital...
ListenMark Liechty, “Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal” (U of Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did Nepal become synonymous, in the minds of many Westerners, with the idea of a mystical paradise and a place to find enlightenment? How did Kathmandu become the subject of songs by countercul...
ListenPablo Piccato, “A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico” (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico (University of California Press, 2017) explores the definitive changes that the justice system as well as criminal ideas and practices under...
ListenBhoomi Thakore, “South Asians on the U.S. Screen: Just Like Everyone Else?” (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the portrayal of a character like Apu matter? What does the representation of South Asian TV characters tell us about society at large? In her new book, South Asians on the U.S. Screen: J...
ListenJohn Gennari, “Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), scholar John Gennari examines the intersectionalities between African American and I...
ListenIdo Hartogsohn, "American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activat...
ListenImani Perry, “May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem in August 2016 prior to a preseason game reopened a national conversation about public performances of patriotism. What does a national a...
ListenMark Glancy, "Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend (Oxford University Press, 2020) tells the incredible story of how a sad, neglected boy became the suave, glamorous star many know and idolize. The first...
ListenMehal Krayem, “Heroes, Villains and the Muslim Exception: Muslim and Arab Men in Australian Crime Drama” (Melbourne UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Heroes, Villains and the Muslim Exception: Muslim and Arab Men in Australian Crime Drama (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Mehal Krayem, a sociologist and researcher at the ...
ListenKevin Mattson, "We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America (Oxford UP, 2020), Kevin Mattson documents punk rock in the early 1980s through a c...
ListenJoseph Esposito, “Dinner in Camelot: The Night America’s Greatest Scientists, Writers, and Scholars Partied at the Kennedy White House” (ForeEdge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Dinner in Camelot: The Night America’s Greatest Scientists, Writers, and Scholars Partied at the Kennedy White House (ForeEdge, 2018), Joseph Esposito examines the night of April 4...
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...
ListenCarolyn Day, “Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease” (Bloomsbury, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease (Bloomsbury, 2017), Carolyn Day tracks the relationship between dress, appearance, and tuberculosis in the eighteenth an...
ListenBilly Coleman, "Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788-1865" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
CAN you hear the people sing? Political music is often understood as the property of the common people, used as a potent (and noisy) weapon against the interests of the powerful. This is particular...
ListenAnamik Saha, “Race and the Cultural Industries” (Polity, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do the media make race? This question is at the heart of Race and the Cultural Industries (Polity, 2018), the new book by Anamik Saha, Lecturer in Media, Communications and Promotion at Goldsmi...
ListenEmily J. Lordi, "The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Soul is one of those concepts that is often evoked, but rarely satisfactorily defined. In The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s (Duke University Press 2020), Emily J. Lord...
ListenDahlia Schweitzer, “Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory as we prep for the zombie apocalypse. In her new book Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Dahlia Schwei...
ListenWarren Hoffman, "The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical", 2nd edition (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Warren Hoffman’s The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical, 2nd edition (Rutgers UP, 2020) explores the ways that race and racism have shaped the American musical from Show Boat to Hamilto...
ListenAlex Wade, “Playback: A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book Playback: A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), Alex Wade examines the culture of bedroom coding, arcades, and format wars in 1980s Britain. Wade intervie...
ListenNeil Shister, "Radical Ritual: How Burning Man Changed the World" (Counterpoint, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Written from Neil Shister’s perspective as a journalist, student of American culture, and six-time participant in Burning Man, Radical Ritual: How Burning Man Changed the World (Counterpoint, 2019)...
ListenChristine E. Evans, “Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (Yale University Press, 2016), Christine E. Evans reveals that Soviet television in the Brezhnev era was anything but boring. Wheth...
ListenLissette Lopez Szwydky, "Transmedia Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century" (Ohio State UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode of New Books in Literary Studies we speak with Lissette Lopez Szwydky, author of the new book Transmedia Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century (Ohio State UP, 2020) A comprehensive s...
ListenDavid Weinstein, “The Eddie Cantor Story: A Jewish Life in Performance and Politics” (Brandeis UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Eddie Cantor was once among the most popular performers in the United States. He was influential and innovative on stage, radio, and film from the early twentieth century though the early 1960s. He...
ListenSimone C. Drake, "Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson's Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Duke UP, 2020) is an engaging and interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary blac...
ListenAndrew Friedman, “Chefs, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll” (Ecco Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I first really got to know Andrew Friedman after the death of our mutual friend, the great food writer Josh Ozersky. Andrew is a widely respected food writer who has collaborated on numerous landma...
ListenEric San Juan, "The Films of Martin Scorsese: Gangsters, Greed, and Guilt" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Few mainstream filmmakers have as pronounced a disregard for the supposed rules of filmmaking as Martin Scorsese. His inventiveness displays a reaction against the “right” way to make a movie, freq...
ListenJon Kraszewski, “Reality TV” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book Reality TV (Routledge, 2017), author Jon Kraszewski explores reality television’s relationship to the American cityscape. Starting with show such as Candid Camera and An American Family...
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...
ListenJennifer Frost, “Producer of Controversy: Stanley Kramer, Hollywood Liberalism and the Cold War” (UP of Kansas, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While Stanley Kramer is considered a successful producer and director of many films as Hollywood moved out of the studio era, he also was criticized for his lesser skills as a director, as well as ...
ListenPaul Howe, "Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Howe's book Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World (Cornell UP, 2020) offers a novel and provocative perspective on how we came to be living in an age of political immaturity...
ListenChristopher Grobe, “The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Christopher Grobe’s The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV (New York University Press, 2017) traces the ways the performance of confession permeated and tra...
ListenBarbara Keys, "The Ideal of Global Sport: From Peace to Human Rights" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Barbara Keys, Professor of US and International History at Durham University, and author and editor of The Ideal of Global Sport: From Peace to Human Rights (University of Pe...
ListenClinton Walker, “Deadly Woman Blues: Black Women and Australian Music” (NewSouth Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Deadly Woman Blues: Black Women and Australian Music (NewSouth Books, 2018), Australian writer Clinton Walker presents a group biography of the black women who made Australian music. Through his...
ListenJoel Miller, "Memoir of a Roadie: Axl Said I made a Great Cup of Tea…" (2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Memoir of a Roadie: Axl said I made a great Cup of Tea…Scott Weiland liked The Carpenters…and Ozzy Drinks Rosé (2020) Joel Miller recounts his time in the early 2000s as a road for...
ListenDouglas W. Shadle, “Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the most neglected areas of musicological research is art music written by nineteenth-century American composers, thus Douglas Shadle‘s book Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century ...
ListenJohn Locke, "Queen of the Gangsters: Stories by Margie Harris" (Off-Trail Publications, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Queen of the Gangsters: Stories by Margie Harris (Off-Trail Publications, 2011), is the first anthology of work of crime fiction writer Margie Harris. Edited by John Locke, Queen of the Gangsters b...
ListenCarla M. Wilson, “Curious Impossibilities: Ten Cinematic Riffs” (Black Scat Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Impossible Conversations: Imaginary Interviews with World-Famous Artists (Black Scat Books, 2015), Carla M. Wilson imagined discussions with (you guessed it) world-famous artists. In this book—C...
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...
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....
ListenGlenn Kenny, "Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas" (Hanover Square, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For the thirtieth anniversary of its premiere comes the vivid and immersive history behind Martin Scorsese’s signature film Goodfellas, hailed by critics as the greatest mob movie ever made. In the...
ListenZach Sands, “Film Comedy and the American Dream” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode Diana DePasquale talks to Zach Sands, author of Film Comedy and the American Dream (Routledge, 2017). Some of the films Zach writes about are Harvey, The Graduate, Blazing Saddles, ...
ListenGregory A. Daddis, "Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his compelling evaluation of Cold War popular culture, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (Cambridge UP, 2020), Gregory Daddis explores how men's adventure magazi...
ListenBenjamin Teitelbaum, “Lions of the North: Sounds of the New Nordic Radical Nationalism” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Music is frequently connected to leftist politics and seen as the soundtrack to social protest movements, most notably the civil rights movement. But the far right groups use music too. Benjamin Te...
ListenCarla Yanni, "Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Every fall on move-in day, parents tearfully bid farewell to their beloved sons and daughters at college dormitories: it is an age-old ritual. The residence hall has come to mark the threshold betw...
ListenFranz Rickaby, et al., “Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era” (U Wisconsin Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gretchen Dykstra‘s career to date has been both impressive and wide-ranging. She was the founding President of the Times Square Alliance, the former Commissioner of the NYC Department of Consumer A...
ListenBethany Klein, "Selling Out: Culture, Commerce and Popular Music" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the music industry work in the modern world? In Selling Out: Culture, Commerce and Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2020), Bethany Klein, a Professor of Media and Communication at the University...
ListenAndrew McKevitt, “Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America (UNC Press, 2017), Andrew McKevitt explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment in 1980s America when the future look...
ListenJulia Sneeringer, "A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69" (Bloomsbury, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Beatles’ sojourn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg during the early 1960s is part of music legend. As Julia Sneeringer reveals in A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg ...
ListenElizabeth Bucar, “Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve featured a few books on fashion and the Muslim world recently, all part of an effort to re-orient the study of women in the Muslim and Arabic-speaking worlds. Elizabeth Bucar’s Pious Fashion:...
ListenJack Santino, "Public Performances: Studies in the Carnivalesque and Ritualesque" (UP Colorado, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Public Performances: Studies in the Carnivalesque and Ritualesque (University Press of Colorado) offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and o...
ListenPaul Hensler, “The New Boys of Summer: Baseball’s Radical Transformation in the Late Sixties” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Paul Hensler, author of the book The New Boys of Summer: Baseball’s Radical Transformation in the Late Sixties (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). Paul is a baseball historian an...
ListenJessica Pierce, "Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets" (U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A life shared with pets brings many emotions. We feel love for our companions, certainly, and happiness at the thought that we’re providing them with a safe, healthy life. But there’s another emoti...
ListenAlfie Bown, “The Playstation Dreamworld” (Polity, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How can Lacan help us to understand the subversive potential of video games? In The Playstation Dreamworld (Polity, 2017), Alfie Bown, Assistant Professor of Literature at HSMC, Hong Kong, explores...
ListenLaura Westengard, "Gothic Queer Culture: Marginalized Communities and the Ghosts of Insidious Trauma" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Gothic Queer Culture: Marginalized Communities and the Ghosts of Insidious Trauma (University of Nebraska Press), Laura Westengard examines the intersection of queerness and the gothic. Westenga...
ListenJonathan W. White, “Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What were the dreams of the Civil War? Find out by listening to my conversation with Jonathan White about his new book Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (Univers...
ListenIsabella Cosse, "Mafalda: A Social And Political History of a Global Comic" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Isabella Cosse’s Mafalda: A Social And Political History of a Global Comic (Duke University Press) is the definitive account of the most famous comic from Latin America, the Argentine strip Mafalda...
ListenBrett L. Abrams, “Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Brett L. Abrams, author of the book Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). It is part of a series called Sports Icon...
ListenJudith Mair, "The Routledge Handbook of Festivals" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Routledge Handbook of Festivals (Routledge, 2018) offers a comprehensive evaluation of the most current research, debates, and controversies surrounding festivals. It covers a wide range of the...
ListenRebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, “Personal Stereo” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow‘s book, Personal Stereo (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) , which is part of the Object Lessons series, offers a compelling and expertly researched study of the Sony Walkman, taking ...
ListenStooges Brass Band, "Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game" (U Mississippi Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game (University of Mississippi Press, 2020) is a collaboration between musician and ethnomusicologist Kyle DeCoste and more than a dozen ...
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...
ListenC. De Beukelaer and K. M. Spence, "Global Cultural Economy" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How should we understand the role of cultural industries in contemporary society? In Global Cultural Economy (Routledge) Christiaan De Beukelaer, a senior lecturer in cultural policy at the Univers...
ListenMark Fleischman, “Inside Studio 54” (Rare Bird Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Studio 54 opened its doors 40 years ago and since that time it has held a place in American popular culture. Studio 54 was the place to go dancing to great music, mingle with celebrities and beauti...
ListenM. Hinds and J. Silverman, "Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black" (U Iowa Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black (University of Iowa Press, 2020), Michael Hinds and Jonathan Silverman examine transnational and translocal fandoms and the lega...
ListenKinneret Lahad, “A Table for One: A Critical Reading of Singlehood, Gender and Time” (Manchester UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why are you still single? This question is often asked of single women, especially those who are deemed by loved ones or friends to be too old to be single. In her newest book, A Table for One: A ...
ListenDana Renga, "Watching Sympathetic Perpetrators on Italian Television: Gomorrah and Beyond" (Palgrave MacMillan, 20 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Watching Sympathetic Perpetrators on Italian Television: Gomorrah and Beyond (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), Dana Renga offers the first comprehensive study of recent, popular Italian television. Bu...
ListenJenny Natasha and Tom Boniface-Webb, “I Was Britpopped: The A-Z of Britpop” (Valley Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I Was Britpopped: The A-Z of Britpop (Valley Press, 2017) is a comprehensive guide to the people, the bands, the places, and the events that shaped British music in the mid-to-late 1990s. Taking on...
ListenElspeth H. Brown, "Work! A Queer History of Modelling" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the haute couture runways of Paris and New York and editorial photo shoots for glossy fashion magazines to reality television, models have been a ubiquitous staple of twentieth- and twenty-fir...
ListenVanda Krefft, “The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox” (Harper, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though not a figure in the public imagination today, William Fox is a man whose legacy is visible in the numerous media enterprises that bear his name. Vanda Krefft‘s biography The Man Who Made the...
ListenLauren Michele Jackson, "White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation" (Beacon, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation (Beacon, 2019), Lauren Michele Jackson analyzes Christina Aguilera, high fashion, the conceptual poetr...
ListenRichard Power Sayeed, “1997: The Future that Never Happened (Zed Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Richard Power Sayeed’s book, 1997: The Future that Never Happened (Zed Books, 2017), is a brilliant and exhaustively researched account of the late 1990s. The subject matter covered is broad. From...
ListenKyle Barnett, "Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry" (U Michigan Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2020), Kyle Barnett tells the story of the smaller U.S. record labels in the 1920s that created ...
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...
ListenNate Marshall, "Finna: Poems" (One World, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Finna: Poems (One World), his new collection of poetry, Nate Marshall examines the way that pop culture influences Black vernacular, the role of storytelling, family, and place. Marshall defines...
ListenKathryn Lofton, “Consuming Religion” (U. Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kathryn Lofton is a professor of religious studies and history at Yale University. Her book Consuming Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2017) offers a collection of eleven essays of cultural c...
ListenM. Hennefeld and N. Sammond, "Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the films of Larry Clark to the feminist comedy of Amy Schumer to the fall of Louis C. K., comedic, graphic, and violent moments of abjection have permeated twentieth- and twenty-first-century...
ListenMary Tomsic, “Beyond the Silver Screen: A History of Women, Filmmaking and Film Culture in Australia, 1920-1990” (Melbourne UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Beyond the Silver Screen: A History of Women, Filmmaking and Film Culture in Australia, 1920-1990 (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Mary Tomsic, an ARC Postdoctoral Research...
ListenNatalia Milanesio, "¡Destape! Sex, Democracy, and Freedom in Postdictatorial Argentina" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Under dictatorship in Argentina, sex and sexuality were regulated to the point where sex education, explicit images, and even suggestive material were prohibited. With the return to democracy in 19...
ListenPeter Filichia, “Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season 1959-2009” (Applause, 2010) from 2011-05-27T16:19:31
Speaking to long time theater critic Peter Filichia, one is reminded of listening to an old-time sportwriter talk about baseball. The Broadway he describes is full of colorful personalities, anecdo...
ListenPeter Filichia, “Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season 1959-2009” (Applause, 2010) from 2011-05-27T16:19:31
Speaking to long time theater critic Peter Filichia, one is reminded of listening to an old-time sportwriter talk about baseball. The Broadway he describes is full of colorful personalities, anecdo...
Listen