New Books in Communications

Emily West, "Buy Now: How Amazon Branded Convenience and Normalized Monopoly" (MIT Press, 2022)

09 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How Amazon combined branding and relationship marketing with massive distribution infrastructure to become the ultimate service brand in the digital e...

Jason Steinhauer, "History, Disrupted: How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

06 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Internet has changed the past. Social media, Wikipedia, mobile networks, and the viral and visual nature of the Web have inundated the public sphe...

Pandemic Perspectives 9: Covid, 'Scientism,' and the Betrayal of the Enlightenment

04 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law profess...

Robert E. Gutsche Jr., "The Future of the Presidency, Journalism, and Democracy: After Trump" (Routledge, 2022)

03 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Future of the Presidency, Journalism, and Democracy: After Trump (Routledge, 2022), Dr. Robert E. Gutsche Jr. examines the effects of Donal...

Daniel J. Solove and Woodrow Hartzog, "Breached!: Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It" (Oxford UP, 2022)

02 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Digital connections permeate our lives-and so do data breaches. Given that we must be online for basic communication, finance, healthcare, and more, i...

William F. Eadie, "When Communication Became a Discipline" (Lexington, 2021)

02 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Communication Became a Discipline (Lexington, 2021) argues that speech and journalism professors embraced the concept of communication between 1...

Amanda D. Lotz, "Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars" (MIT Press, 2021)

27 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Has the internet really been the main culprit behind the upheaval of the contemporary media industries? In Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannib...

Sam Lebovic, "A Righteous Smokescreen: Postwar America and the Politics of Cultural Globalization" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

22 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Sam Lebovic’s A Righteous Smokescreen: Postwar America and the Politics of Cultural Globalization (University of Chicago Press, 2022) is an ex...

Nicole Starosielski, "Media Hot and Cold" (Duke UP, 2021)

20 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Media Hot and Cold (Duke UP, 2021) attunes the reader to temperature as a crucial but often overlooked terrain of control, communication and contesta...

David Nemer, "Technology of the Oppressed: Inequity and the Digital Mundane in Favelas of Brazil" (MIT Press, 2022)

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Technology of the Oppressed: Inequity and the Digital Mundane in Favelas of Brazil (MIT Press, 2022), David Nemer draws on extensive ethnographic...

Paul R. Deslandes, "The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain: From the First Photographs to David Beckham" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Spanning the decades from the rise of photography to the age of the selfie, The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain: From the First Photographs to Davi...

Jared N. Champion and Peter C. Kunze, "Taking a Stand: Contemporary US Stand-Up Comedians As Public Intellectuals" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Stand-up comedians have a long history of walking a careful line between serious and playful engagement with social issues: Lenny Bruce questioned the...

Nancy Pedri, "A Concise Dictionary of Comics" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)

18 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Written in straightforward, jargon-free language, Nancy Pedri's A Concise Dictionary of Comics (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) guides stude...

Kris Ruijgrok, "Internet Use and Protest in Malaysia and Other Authoritarian Regimes" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

15 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Internet-enabled mobilization begins long before there is a call for protest. In the book Internet Use and Protest in Malaysia and other Authoritaria...

Matt Sheedy, "Owning the Secular: Religious Symbols, Culture Wars, Western Fragility " (Routledge, 2021)

15 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Owning the Secular: Religious Symbols, Culture Wars, Western Fragility (Routledge, 2021), Matt Sheedy, Visiting Assistant Professor at the Unive...

Jonathan Beller, "The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2021)

15 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism (Duke UP, 2021) Jonathan Beller forcefully demonstrates that the history of commod...

Tim Hwang, "Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet" (FSG Originals, 2020)

14 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet (FSG Originals, 2020), Tim Hwang investigates the way big t...

Jennifer Petersen, "How Machines Came to Speak: Media Technologies and Freedom of Speech" (Duke UP, 2022)

14 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In How Machines Came to Speak: Media Technologies and Freedom of Speech (Duke University Press, 2022), Jennifer Petersen constructs a genealogy of h...

Josef Benson and Doug Singsen, "Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes: Whiteness and Its Borderlands in American Comics and Graphic Novels" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)

12 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

American comics from the start have reflected the white supremacist culture out of which they arose. Superheroes and comic books in general are produc...

Jacob Mchangama, "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" (Basic Books, 2022)

06 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Jacob Mchangama, founder and director of the think tank Justitia, has written a one-volume history of freedom of thought, which ranges from the lon...

The Business of Scholarly Communication and Publishing

05 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Joe Esposito, Senior Partner of Clarke & Esposito. We talk about the space between academic research and consumer markets...

Nick Marx, "Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television" (Indiana UP, 2019)

30 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invite...

Christopher Ali, "Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity" (MIT, 2021)

29 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rura...

The Future of Rational Decision Making: A Discussion with Olivier Sibony

29 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast Owen Bennett-Jones discusses the future of rational decision making with Professor Olivier Sibony who after 25 years with McKinsey & C...

Scott Timcke, "Algorithms and the End of Politics: How Technology Shapes 21st-Century American Life" (Bristol UP, 2021)

28 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As the US contends with issues of populism and de-democratization, this timely study considers the impacts of digital technologies on the country’s ...

Robert P. Kolker, "Triumph Over Containment: American Film in the 1950s" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

25 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The long 1950s, which extend back to the early postwar period and forward into the early 1960s, were a period of “containment culture” in America,...

Liora Sarfati, "Contemporary Korean Shamanism: From Ritual to Digital" (Indiana UP, 2021)

25 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Once viewed as an embarrassing superstition, the theatrical religious performances of Korean shamans--who communicate with the dead, divine the future...

Liz Clarke, "The American Girl Goes to War: Women and National Identity in US Silent Film" (Rutgers UP, 2022)

23 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During the 1910s, films about war often featured a female protagonist. The films portrayed women as spies, cross-dressing soldiers, and athletic defen...

Jerry Ceppos, "Covering Politics in the Age of Trump" (LSU Press, 2021)

23 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As the United States moves on from the Trump era — and perhaps begins to contemplate what a second one might look like — conversations about journ...

E. James West, "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (U of Illinois Press, 2020)

17 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America (University of Illinois Press, 2020) reveals the previously hidden i...

Ori Schwarz, "Sociological Theory for Digital Society: The Codes That Bind Us Together" (Polity Press, 2021)

16 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The digital revolution has not only transformed multiple aspects of social life – it also shakes sociological theory, transforming the most basic as...

Annie Berke, "Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television" (U California Press, 2022)

16 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What is the hidden history of women in the television industry? In Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (U California Press...

Lydia Pyne, "Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Social Network" (Reaktion Books, 2021)

15 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For this episode, I met historian and writer Dr. Lydia Pyne. She is author of Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Social Network (Re...

Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza, "A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism" (Oxford UP, 2021)

15 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism (Oxford UP, 2021), Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza exam...

87 Stef Aupers on Conspirituality

08 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Stef Aupers is professor of media culture in the Institute for Media Studies at the University of KU Leuven in the Netherlands. As a cultural sociolog...

Julian Stallabrass, "Killing for Show: Photography, War, and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)

04 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the autumn of 2014, the Royal Air Force released blurry video of a missile blowing up a pick-up truck that may have had a weapon attached to its fl...

Firmin Debrabander, "Life After Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

03 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Privacy is gravely endangered in the digital age, and we, the digital citizens, are its principal threat, willingly surrendering it to avail ourselves...

Paul M. Dover, "The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

25 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Paul Dover argues that changes in the generation, prese...

Kathy Roberts Forde and Sid Bedingfield, "Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

24 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

White publishers and editors used their newspapers to build, nurture, and protect white supremacy across the South in the decades after the Civil War....

Mary Norris, "Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen" (Norton, 2020)

22 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Norris, The New Yorker's Comma Queen and best-selling author of Between You & Me, has had a lifelong love affair with words. In Greek to Me: A...

Clarissa Ceglio, "A Cultural Arsenal for Democracy: The World War II Work of U.S. Museums" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)

18 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In A Cultural Arsenal for Democracy: The World War II Work of US Museums (University of Massachusetts Press, 2022), Dr. Ceglio argues that attempts ...

Keller Easterling, "Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World" (Verso, 2021)

17 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How do we formulate alternative approaches to the world’s unresponsive or intractable dilemmas, from climate change, to inequality, to concentration...

Kathryn Millard, "Double Exposure: How Social Psychology Fell in Love with the Movies" (Rutgers UP, 2022)

17 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Double Exposure: How Social Psychology Fell in Love with the Movies (Rutgers University Press, 2022) examines the role of film in shaping social psy...

Vânia Penha-Lopes, "The Presidential Elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, Whiteness, and the Nation" (Lexington Books, 2021)

16 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Presidential Elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, Whiteness, and the Nation (Lexington Books, 2021) is a sociological analysis of the similarities b...

Christopher Chávez, "The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public" (U Arizona Press, 2021)

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How is power enacted in everyday broadcast practices? National Public Radio has a “rhetoric of impartiality” but this obscures the ideological wor...

In Science We Trust?: An insider Conversation with Health Policy Reporter, Fran Kritz

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Americans are deeply polarized on many issues, including science and medicine. Where once was widespread agreement, today the differences are sharp: o...

Jun Liu, "Shifting Dynamics of Contention in the Digital Age: Mobile Communication and Politics in China" (Oxford UP, 2020)

11 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How has digital communication technologies impacted the dynamics of political contention in China? What is the role of mobile technology in the countr...

Kevin Coe and Joshua M. Scacco, "The Ubiquitous Presidency: Presidential Communication and Digital Democracy in Tumultuous Times" (Oxford UP, 2021)

10 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Ubiquitous Presidency: Presidential Communication and Digital Democracy in Tumultuous Times (Oxford UP, 2021) is part of the Oxford Studies in D...

Catherine Cocks of "Feeding the Elephant" on Scholarly Communication

10 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hear from Catherine Cocks, assistant director and editor-in-chief at Michigan State University Press talk about her attempt to replicate the success o...

Paula Lynn Ellis et al., "News for US: Citizen-Centered Journalism" (Cognella, 2021)

07 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the midst of the disruptions and distrust that have plagued traditional media in recent years, and a degree of polarization rarely seen in America...

Karen Redrobe and Jeff Scheible, "Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

04 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures (U of Minnesota Press, 2021), co-editors Karen Redrobe and Jeff Schieble argue tha...

Lisa Jane Disch, "Making Constituencies: Representation as Mobilization in Mass Democracy" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

04 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The common-sense way of thinking about what representatives should do in democracies tends to revolve around the concept of responsiveness: representa...

Keith Wailoo, "Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

31 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Police put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold for selling cigarettes on a New York City street corner. George Floyd was killed by police outside a store...

Grant Tavinor, "The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality" (Routledge, 2021)

28 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When philosophers have approached virtual reality, they have almost always done so through the lens of metaphysics, asking questions about the reality...

Stephanie A. Martin, "Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump" (U Alabama Press, 2021)

27 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Stephanie (Sam) A. Martin’s new book, Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump (U Alabama Pre...

Dana Polan, "Dreams of Flight: 'The Great Escape' in American Film and Culture" (U California Press, 2021)

21 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Caught on film, the iconic jump of escaped POW Virgil Hilts (Steve McQueen) over an imposing barbed wire fence on a stolen motorcycle has become an un...

Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill, "Confidence Culture" (Duke UP, 2022)

21 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Confidence Culture (Duke UP, 2022), Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill argue that imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe...

Esther De Dauw and Daniel J. Connell, "Toxic Masculinity: Mapping the Monstrous in Our Heroes" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)

20 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Scholars Esther De Dauw and Daniel J. Connell have assembled an array of chapters that explore the idea of masculinity in the realm of contemporary he...

Georgia Cervin, "Degrees of Difficulty: How Women's Gymnastics Rose to Prominence and Fell from Grace" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

20 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Electrifying athletes like Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci helped make women’s artistic gymnastics one of the most popular events in the Olympic Game...

Matt Carlson et al., "News After Trump: Journalism's Crisis of Relevance in a Changed Media Culture" (Oxford UP, 2021)

19 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Political scientists have argued that Donald Trump exacerbated long-simmering changes in polarization, populism, and other aspects of politics. In the...

Amy Holdsworth, "On Living with Television" (Duke UP, 2021)

18 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How should we understand the role of television in everyday life? In On Living with Television (Duke UP, 2021), Amy Holdsworth, a Senior Lecturer...

Marshall Poe: The Founder and Editor of the New Books Network

17 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This interview was recorded and first published in early 2020 when the NBN had about a million downloads a month. Since then the downloads have incr...

Miranda Campbell, "Reimagining the Creative Industries: Youth Creative Work, Communities of Care" (Routledge, 2021)

11 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How can we make creative industries fair and inclusive? In Reimagining the Creative Industries: Youth Creative Work, Communities of Care (Routledge,...

Anna Watkins Fisher, "The Play in the System: The Art of Parasitical Resistance" (Duke UP, 2020)

06 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What does artistic resistance look like in the twenty-first century, when disruption and dissent have been co-opted and commodified in ways that reinf...

Exploring Science Literacy and Public Engagement with Science

31 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Ayelet Baram-Tsabari. We talk about the accessibility of science using Google to scholars and students in languages beyon...

Jennifer Fay, "Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene" (Oxford UP, 2018)

27 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene (Oxford UP, 2018) explores the connection between cinema and artificial weather, climates,...

Winfrey Harris, "The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America" (Berrett-Koehler, 2021)

24 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the second edition of her book, The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America (Berrett-Koehler, 2021), Tamara ...

Hatim El-Hibri, "Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure" (Duke UP, 2021)

24 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure (Duke UP, 2021), Hatim El-Hibri explores how the creation and circulation of images ha...

Sarah and Larry Nannery, "What to Say Next: Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love with Autism Spectrum Disorder" (Tiller Press, 2021)

23 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Sarah and Larry Nannery about their new book What to Say Next: Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love with Autism Spectr...

Janneke Adema, "Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities" (MIT Press, 2021)

22 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities (MIT Press, 2021), Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and co...

Joseph Reagle on H. G. Wells's "World Brain" (1937)

22 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In a series of talks and essays in 1937, H. G. Wells proselytized for what he called a World Brain, as manifested in a World Encyclopedia--a repositor...

Chun-Yi Peng, "Mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin: Popular Culture, Masculinity, and Social Perceptions" (Springer, 2021)

15 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin: Popular Culture, Masculinity, and Social Perceptions (Springer, 2021) explores how language ideologies have emerged fo...

Matthew H. Brown, "Indirect Subjects: Nollywood's Local Address" (Duke UP, 2021)

15 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Indirect Subjects: Nollywood's Local Address (Duke UP, 2021), Matthew H. Brown analyzes the content of the prolific Nigerian film industry's most...

Jacob Johanssen, "Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis/Inhibition" (Routledge, 2021)

14 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis/Inhibition (Routledge, 2021), Jacob Johanssen takes us on a journey ...

Cinthia Gannett and John Brereton, "Traditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies" (Fordham UP, 2016)

14 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Traditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies (Fordham UP, 2016) explores the important ways Jesuits have employed rhetoric, the...

Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo, "Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century" (Manchester UP, 2021)

13 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester UP, 2021), Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo exp...

The #MeToo Movement in China and the Case of Tennis Star Peng Shuai

10 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Several high-profile cases of sexual harassment and assault have helped the #MeToo movement in China continue to make impacts on a society that is hig...

Jamie Mustard, "The Iconist: The Art and Science of Standing Out" (BenBella Books, 2019)

09 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Jamie Mustard about his new book The Iconist: The Art and Science of Standing Out (BenBella Books, 2019). Ever feel like you’re ...

Kate Fortmueller, "Hollywood Shutdown: Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the Time of COVID" (U Texas Press, 2021)

09 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

By March 2020, the spread of COVID-19 had reached pandemic proportions, forcing widespread shutdowns across industries, including Hollywood. Studios, ...

Alisa Freedman, "Japan on American TV: Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost" (Association for Asian Studies, 2021)

08 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Alisa Freedman's book Japan on American TV: Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost (Association for Asian Studies, 2021) explore...

Nishaant Choksi, "Graphic Politics in Eastern India: Script and the Quest for Autonomy" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

08 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Investigating the communicative practices of indigenous Santali speakers in eastern India, this book examines the overlooked role of script in regiona...

Andrew Pettegree and Arthur Der Weduwen, "The Library: A Rich and Fragile History" (Basic Books, 2021)

07 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf a...

Drew A. Thompson, "Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times" (U Michigan Press, 2021)

06 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Photographers and their images were critical to the making of Mozambique, first as a colony of Portugal and then as independent nation at war with apa...

Caetlin Benson-Allott, "The Stuff of Spectatorship: Material Cultures of Film and Television" (U California Press, 2021)

06 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

“Made of light and later sound, the film experience cannot be touched, but that does not mean it is immaterial.” So writes Dr. Caetlin Benson-Allo...

Shaoling Ma, "The Stone and the Wireless: Mediating China, 1861–1906" (Duke UP, 2021)

06 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I interview Shaoling Ma, professor of Humanities (Literature) at Yale-NUS about her new book, The Stone and the Wireless: Mediating ...

Saskia E. Wieringa and Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, "Propaganda and the Genocide in Indonesia" (Routledge, 2018)

03 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Several months ago, Saskia Wieringa joined her co-authors Jess Melvin and Annie Pohlman on the show to talk about their edited volume The Internation...

Jonatan Leer and S. G. S. Krogager, "Research Methods in Digital Food Studies" (Routledge, 2021)

02 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Research Methods in Digital Food Studies (Routledge, 2021) offers the first methodological synthesis of digital food studies. It brings together con...

William Germano, "On Revision: The Only Writing That Counts" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

02 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of William Germano, Professor of English at Cooper Union, New York, We talk about his new book On Revision: The Only Writin...

David Avrin, "Why Customers Leave (And How to Win Them Back)" (Career Press, 2019)

02 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to David Avrin about his new book Why Customers Leave (And How to Win Them Back) (Career Press, 2019). There are three central themes...

Eric Berkowitz, "Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West from the Ancients to Fake News" (Beacon Press, 2021)

29 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Eric Berkowitz has written a short history of a censorship, a large topic that has been a phenomenon since the advent of recorded history. In Danger...

Jasmine Mitchell, "Imagining the Mulatta: Blackness in U. S. and Brazilian Media" (U Illinois Press, 2020)

22 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Brazil markets itself as a racially mixed utopia. The United States prefers the term melting pot. Both nations have long used the image of the mulatta...

Beatrice Gruendler, "The Rise of the Arabic Book" (Harvard UP, 2020)

22 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How did it happen that, in the 13th century, Europe's largest library owned fewer than 2,000 volumes while Baghdad alone boasted of several libraries ...

Chinese Digital Vigilantism: The Mediated and Mediatised Justice-Seeking

19 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What is digital vigilantism? How do Chinese citizens seek justice online? How does digital vigilantism reflect contemporary Chinese technological and ...

68 Martin Puchner: Writing and Reading from Gilgamesh to Amazon

18 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Book Industry Month continues with a memory-lane voyage back to a beloved early RtB episode. This conversation with Martin Puchner about the very or...

Robert Brooks, "Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers, and Algorithmic Matchmakers" (Columbia UP, 2021)

15 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when the human brain, which evolved over eons, collides with twenty-first-century technology? Machines can now push psychological buttons...

Jeffrey J. Hall, "Japan's Nationalist Right in the Internet Age: Online Media and Grassroots Conservative Activism" (Routledge, 2021)

11 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Japan's nationalist right have used the internet to organize offline activism in increasingly visible ways. Jeffrey J. Hall, investigates the role of...

Sima Shakhsari, "Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan" (Duke UP, 2020)

10 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 2000s, mainstream international news outlets celebrated the growth of Weblogistan—the online and real-life transnational network of Ira...

Maria Jose de Abreu, "The Charismatic Gymnasium: Breath, Media, and Religious Revivalism in Contemporary Brazil" (Duke UP, 2021)

09 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In The Charismatic Gymnasium: Breath, Media, and Religious Revivalism in Contemporary Brazil (Duke University Press, 2021), Maria José de Abreu e...

How University Presses Keep Up With Everything: A Discussion with Lisa Bayer

08 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

At the New Books Network, we love university presses. So we're happy to tell you about University Press Week, the annual celebration of UPs and their...

Genevieve Yue, "Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality" (Fordham UP, 2020)

03 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The female form has been a fraught site of filmic meaning – of desire and violence, of sex and death – from the very beginnings of cinema. But how...