New Books in Communications
Episodes
Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018)
07 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you mention Appalachia to many people, they may immediately respond with the "Deliverance" dueling banjos theme. Unfortunately, this is an example ...
James Schwoch, "Wired into Nature: The Telegraph and the North American Frontier" (U Illinois Press, 2018)
06 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It's been called the first Internet. In the nineteenth century, the telegraph spun a world wide web of cables and poles, carrying electronic signals w...
Thomas F. Gieryn, "Truth-Spots: How Places Make People Believe" (U Chicago, 2018)
05 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Is the existence of truth coming to a screeching halt? Does truth still exist? In Truth-Spots: How Places Make People Believe (University of Chicago P...
Margaret Hennefeld, "Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes" (Columbia UP, 2018)
05 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the early days of film, female comedians appeared in films that included both strange activities and slapstick. In her new book Specters of Slapsti...
Jacob Johanssen, "Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data" (Routledge, 2018)
28 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How can insights from psychoanalysis help us understand digital culture? in Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data ...
Bradford Vivian, "Commonplace Witnessing: Rhetorical Invention, Historical Remembrance, and Public Culture" (Oxford UP, 2017)
27 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Kendall Phillips, "A Place of Darkness: The Rhetoric of Horror in Early American Cinema" (U Texas, 2018)
20 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Joy Lisi Rankin, "A People’s History of Computing in the United States" (Harvard UP, 2018).
19 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We know, perhaps too well, the innovation-centric history of personal computing. Yet, computer users were not necessarily microelectronics consumers f...
Margaret Peacock, "Innocent Weapons: The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War" (UNC Press, 2014)
13 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Innocent Weapons: The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War (University of North Press, 2014), Margaret Peacock analyzes the va...
Jieun Baek, "North Korea's Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground Is Transforming a Closed Society" (Yale UP, 2016)
12 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With recent events having raised hopes that significant change may be afoot in North Korea, it is important to remember that DPRK society has in fact ...
Elliott J. Gorn, "Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till" (Oxford UP, 2018)
05 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The story of Emmett Till’s death at the hands of white Mississippians is well known. For many Americans, it highlights the racism of the Jim Crow So...
Katie Beswick, "Social Housing In Performance: The English Council Estate On and Off Stage" (Methuen Drama, 2018)
22 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How has the council estate been represented on stage? In Social Housing In Performance: The English Council Estate On and Off Stage (Methuen Drama, 20...
Is Social Media Killing Democracy? with Regina Rini
22 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Regia Rini is the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Moral and Social Cognition at the York University. Her research resides at the intersections...
Volker Berghahn, "Journalists between Hitler and Adenauer: From Inner Emigration to the Moral Reconstruction of West Germany" (Princeton UP, 2018)
18 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What can the lives of journalists under Hitler and Adenauer reveal? How did they navigate the Third Reich as "internal emigrants"? How did the emergin...
Alex Bentley and Michael O'Brien, "The Acceleration of Cultural Change: From Ancestors to Algorithms" (MIT Press, 2017)
08 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Our evolutionary success, according to co-authors Alex Bentley and Michael O'Brien, lies in our ability to acquire cultural wisdom and teach it to the...
Joe Street, "Dirty Harry’s America: Clint Eastwood, Harry Callahan, and the Conservative Backlash" (UP of Florida, 2016)
07 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 o...
Irmak Karademir Hazir, "Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010" (Routledge, 2018)
26 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How has European culture changed since the 1960s? In Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Cultur...
Pamela E. Klassen, "The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary's Journey on Indigenous Land" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
24 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the dawn of the radio age in the 1920s, Frederick Du Vernet—Anglican archbishop and self-declared scientist—announced a psychic channel by whic...
Tison Pugh, "The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom" (Rutgers UP, 2018)
18 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps no form of popular art has appeared as poised to resist subversive sexual themes as the television situation comedy. But Tison Pugh writes tha...
Annabel Cooper, "Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen" (Otago UP, 2018)
14 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen (Otago University Press, 2018), Annabel Cooper, an Associate Professor in t...
Sarah Banet-Weiser, "Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny" (Duke UP, 2018)
10 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between popular misogyny and popular feminism? In Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny(Duke University Press, 201...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 Gener...
Kevin Hamilton and Ned O’Gorman, "Lookout America!: The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War" (Dartmouth College Press, 2018)
05 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
One of the major aspects of the end of the Cold War has been the discovery and release of records related to many government activities from the perio...
Mark Polizzotti, “Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto” (MIT Press, 2018)
14 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The success of a translator may seem to lie in going unnoticed: the translator ducks out of the spotlight so that the original author may shine. Mark...
J.R. Osborn, “Letters of Light: Arabic Script in Calligraphy, Print, and Digital Design” (Harvard UP, 2017)
12 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Arabic script is astounding! Not only because it represents one of the most commonly spoken languages today –that is, the Arabic language– but b...
Chris Horrocks, “The Joy of Sets: A Short History of the Television” (Reaktion Press, 2017)
08 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 l...
Raymond Boyle, “The Talent Industry: Television, Cultural Intermediaries and New Digital Pathways” (Palgrave, 2018)
06 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What are the hidden structures of the television industry? In The Talent Industry: Television, Cultural Intermediaries and New Digital Pathways (Palgr...
Mike Ananny, “Networked Press Freedom: Creating Infrastructures For a Public Right to Hear” (MIT Press, 2018)
05 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Networked Press Freedom: Creating Infrastructures For a Public Right to Hear (MIT Press, 2018), journalism professor Mike Ananny provides a new fr...
Lee Humphreys, “The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life” (MIT Press, 2018)
19 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Physical journals, scrapbooks, and photo albums all offer their owners the opportunity to chronicle both mundane and extravagant events. But unlike so...
Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, “Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy” (U California Press, 2017)
19 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Benny was one of the first crossover stars in broadcast comedy, rising from the vaudeville circuit to star in radio, film, and television. Kathry...
Rachel O’Neill, “Seduction: Men, Masculinity, and Mediated Intimacy” (Polity , 2018)
12 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How does the seduction, or “pick-up artist,” industry work? In her new book Seduction: Men, Masculinity, and Mediated Intimacy (Polity, 2018), Rac...
Deborah Jaramillo, “The Television Code: Regulating the Screen to Safeguard the Industry” (U Texas Press, 2018)
09 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If you watch old movies or study film history, you may know that early 20th-century Hollywood operated under the Motion Picture Production Code, whic...
P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018)
02 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, outlines the history of social m...
Allyson Jule, “Speaking Up: Understanding Language and Gender” (Multilingual Matters, 2018)
28 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In a time where concepts such as gender pronouns, sexual assault and harassment, and toxic masculinity are entering and shaping public discourse, know...
Lorenzo Zamponi, “Social Movements, Memory and Media: Narrative in Action in the Italian and Spanish Student Movements” (Palgrave, 2018)
25 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do social movements remember the past? How do collective memories affect their current strategic choices? In his book Social Movements, Memory and...
J. Lester, C. Lochmiller, and R. Gabriel, “Discursive Perspectives on Education Policy and Implementation” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The study of education policy is a scholarly field that sheds light on important debates and controversies revolving around education policy and its i...
Denise Y. Ho, “Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
27 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“In Mao’s China, to curate revolution was to make it material.” Denise Y. Ho’s new book explores this premise in a masterful account of exhib...
Ben Epstein, “The Only Constant is Change: Technology, Political Communication, and Innovation Over Time” (Oxford UP, 2018)
22 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Epstein’s new book, The Only Constant is Change: Technology, Political Communication, and Innovation over Time (Oxford University Press, 2018), ...
Mary E. Stuckey, “Political Vocabularies: FDR, The Clergy Letters, and the Elements of Political Argument” (Michigan State UP, 2018)
20 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Mary E. Stuckey’s new book, Political Vocabularies: FDR, The Clergy Letters, and the Elements of Political Argument (Michigan State University Pres...
Paul Offit, “Bad Advice: Or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren’t Your Best Source of Health Information” (Columbia UP, 2018)
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
You should never trust celebrities, politicians, or activists for health information. Why? Because they are not scientists! Scientists often cannot co...
John H. McWhorter, “The Creole Debate” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
14 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John H. McWhorter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has written academic books on creole linguis...
Yves Citton, “The Ecology of Attention” (Polity Press, 2017)
13 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We are arguably living in the midst of a form of economy where attention has become a key resource and value, labor, class, and currency are being rec...
Maria Repnikova, “Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Despite its extraordinary diversity, life in the People’s Republic of China is all too often viewed mainly through the lens of politics, with dynami...
Martin Shuster, “New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How should we understand our new golden age of television? In New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre (University of Chicago Press, 201...
Kelsy Burke, “Christians Under Covers: Evangelicals and Sexual Pleasure on the Internet” (U California Press, 2016)
17 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do we conceptualize religious conservatives and their relationship with sex? And how do Christians use digital media for sexual knowledge and plea...
Daniel Hopkins, “The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
04 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Will voters this fall be voting for or against Donald Trump, even though he isn’t on the ballot? Will they be voting on national issues, such as imm...
Eric Miller, “The Rhetoric of Religious Freedom in the United States” (Lexington Books, 2017)
15 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The recent Supreme Court Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling showed the on-going debate between religious conservatives and advocates of LGBTQ rights. Much of...
Yaron Peleg, “Directed by God: Jewishness in Contemporary Israeli Film and Television” (University of Texas Press, 2016)
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 grow...
Hala Auji, “Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut” (Brill, 2016)
05 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji’s Printin...
Roderick P. Hart, “Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
24 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
To find out what Americans really think about their government, University of Texas-Austin Professor Roderick P. Hart read and analyzed approximately ...
Erik Mueggler, “Songs for Dead Parents: Corpse, Text, and World in Southwest China” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
21 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Lòlop’ò of Southwest China’s Yunnan Province have a folktale in which they, Han Chinese, and Tibetans were given the technology of writing. ...
Peter Hoar, “The World’s Din: Listening to Records, Radio and Films in New Zealand 1880–1940” (Otago University Press, 2018)
18 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 s...
Discussion with Dahlia Schweitzer (“Going Viral”) and Rob Thomas (“Veronica Mars”)
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Sophia Rose Arjana, “Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Popular Culture” (Lexington Books, 2017)
14 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Popular Culture (Lexington Books, 2017) by Sophia Rose Arjana (with Kim Fox), takes us on a riveting journey ...
Sam Lebovic, “Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America” (Harvard UP, 2016)
10 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Appeals to “press freedom” can be heard from across the political spectrum. But what those appeals mean varies dramatically. Sam Lebovic, in his e...
John Nathaniel Clarke, “British Media and the Rwandan Genocide” (Routledge Press, 2018)
04 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It seems safe to assume that media coverage changes the behavior of politicians and voters. And it seems safe to assume this happens in cases of hum...
Mark A. McCutcheon, “The Medium Is the Monster: Canadian Adaptations of Frankenstein and the Discourse of Technology” (Athabasca UP, 2018)
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What do Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Canadian popular culture have in common? This is the question that Mark A. ...
B.J. Mendelson, “Privacy: And How to Get It Back” (Curious Reads, 2017)
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The use of our data and the privacy, or lack thereof, that we have when we go online has become a topic of increasing importance as technology becomes...
Yutao Sun and Seamus Grimes, “China and Global Value Chains” (Routledge, 2018)
30 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today I was joined by Seamus Grimes from Ireland where he is Emeritus Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. With Yutao Sun (Dalian ...
Bhoomi Thakore, “South Asians on the U.S. Screen: Just Like Everyone Else?” (Lexington Books, 2018)
26 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Anamik Saha, “Race and the Cultural Industries” (Polity, 2018)
09 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Jeanine Kraybill, “Unconventional, Partisan, and Polarizing Rhetoric: How the 2016 Election Shaped the Way Candidates Strategize, Engage, and Communicate” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Unconventional, Partisan, and Polarizing Rhetoric: How the 2016 Election Shaped the Way Candidates Strategize, Engage, and Communicate (Rowman and ...
Natalia Roudakova, “Losing Pravda: Ethics and the Press in Post-Truth Russia” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
30 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Natalia Roudakova’s book Losing Pravda: Ethics and the Press in Post-Truth Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2017) explores changes in the world o...
Dahlia Schweitzer, “Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World” (Rutgers UP, 2018)
29 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Daniel J. Kapust, “Flattery and the History of Political Thought: That Glib and Oily Art” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
29 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Kapust‘s book, Flattery and the History of Political Thought: That Glib and Oily Art (Cambridge University Press, 2018), is a rich and fascin...
Vanda Krefft, “The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox” (Harper, 2017)
28 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When you hear “Twentieth Century Fox,” I doubt you know where the source of “Fox” in the name. In her book, The Man Who Made the Movies: The M...
Dorothy Noyes, “Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life” (Indiana UP, 2016)
22 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life (Indiana University Press, 2016) is an anthology of essays from Dorothy Noyes, professor of English a...
Bruce Clarke, “Neocybernetics and Narrative” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014)
22 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Literature and Science at Texas Tech University, Bruce Clarke has spent the last decade-plus publishing groundbrea...
Polarization with Shanto Iyengar
22 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Shanto Iyengar is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He has written extensively on news media and political communication in cont...
Hoda Yousef, “Composing Egypt: Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation, 1870-1930” (Stanford UP,
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Literacy is often portrayed as a social good. Composing Egypt: Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation, 1870-1930 (Stanford University ...
Christine E. Evans, “Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television” (Yale UP, 2016)
09 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (Yale University Press, 2016), Christine E. Evans reveals that Soviet television in ...
Aidan Smith, “Gender, Heteronormativity, and the American Presidency” (Routledge, 2017)
07 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Aidan Smith has written a timely and important analysis of the way that we understand images, masculinity, and femininity, especially through the lens...
Kathryn Woolard, “Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in Twenty-First Century Catalonia” (Oxford UP, 2016)
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Kathryn Woolard is Professor Emerita and Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She has authored seminal works...
Jon Kraszewski, “Reality TV” (Routledge, 2017)
01 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his book Reality TV (Routledge, 2017), author Jon Kraszewski explores reality television’s relationship to the American cityscape. Starting with ...
Jeffrey Shandler, “Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices” (Stanford UP, 2017)
19 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do technological advances and changing archival practices alter historical memory? In what ways have developments in the preservation and dissemin...
Christopher Grobe, “The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV” (NYU Press, 2017)
16 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Christopher Grobe’s The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV (New York University Press, 2017) traces the way...
Dmitry Novikov, “Cybernetics: Past to Future” (Springer Verlag, 2016)
15 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With all of its entailed engagements with epistemology, emergence, and self-organization, cybernetics began (and arguably still is) the science of com...
Andrew Keen, “How To Fix The Future” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2018)
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As a historian I find myself constantly asking the question “Is that really new, or is it rather something that looks new but isn’t?” If you rea...
Kevin Patrick, “The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero” (U Iowa Press, 2017)
02 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero (University of Iowa Press, 2017), Kevin Patrick examines the history of The Phantom—an American...
Nick Montfort, “The Future” (MIT, 2017)
29 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Popular culture provides many visions of the future. From The Jetsons to Futurama, Black Mirror to Minority Report, Western culture has predicted a fu...
Public Debate and Respectful Engagement with John Corvino
25 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John Corvino is Professor of Philosophy at the Wayne State University in Detroit. His academic work focuses on topics in moral, social, and legal ph...
Jacob Smith, “Eco-Sonic Media” (University of California Press, 2015)
18 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Can we have sound media that is ecologically sound? Can we fine tune our media production and consumption habits to a greener key? How can an environm...
Liam Cole Young, “List Cultures: Knowledge and Poetics from Mesopotamia to Buzzfeed” (Amsterdam UP, 2017)
09 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The list is the origin of culture. At least, that’s according to Umberto Eco, whose words open Liam Cole Young‘s new book, List Cultures: Knowled...
Thomas Mullaney, “The Chinese Typewriter: A History” (MIT Press, 2017)
09 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Mullaney’s new book The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press, 2017) provides a fascinating first look at the development of modern Chinese i...
Mark Fenster, “The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information” (Stanford UP, 2017)
30 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information (Stanford University Press, 2017) dispels the myth that transparency o...
Rodney Tiffen, “Disposable Leaders: Media and Leadership Coups from Menzies to Abbott” (NewSouth Publishing, 2017)
22 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Disposable Leaders: Media and Leadership Coups from Menzies to Abbott (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor ...
Julien Mailland and Kevin Driscoll, “Minitel: Welcome to the Internet” (MIT Press, 2017)
21 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When discussing Internet history, many within the United States believe the creation myth of an Internet born in Silicon Valley. But aspects of the In...
Alfie Bown, “The Playstation Dreamworld” (Polity, 2017)
20 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How can Lacan help us to understand the subversive potential of video games? In The Playstation Dreamworld (Polity, 2017), Alfie Bown, Assistant Profe...
Mario Luis Small, “Someone to Talk To” (Oxford UP, 2017)
19 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Who do people turn to when they want to talk about serious issues in their life? Do they end up confiding in people they list as confidants? In his ne...
Zek Valkyrie, “Game Worlds Get Real: How Who We Are Online Became Who We Are Offline” (Praeger, 2017)
15 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Zek Valkyrie teaches at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. His new book, Game Worlds Get Real: How Who We Are Online Became Who We Are Of...
Brett L. Abrams, “Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
15 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Brett L. Abrams, author of the book Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality (Rowman & Littlefield, 2...
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, “Personal Stereo” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
12 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow‘s book, Personal Stereo (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) , which is part of the Object Lessons series, offers a compelling and exper...
Bob Batchelor, “Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
12 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), cultural historian and biographer Bob Batchelor examines the life of...
Jo Littler, “Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power, and Myths of Mobility” (Routledge, 2017)
17 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How does the idea of ‘meritocracy’ serve to reinforce social inequality? In Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility (Routledge,...
Jessica M. Fishman, “Death Makes the News: How the Media Censor and Display the Dead” (NYU Press, 2017)
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Stephanie Brookes, “Politics, Media and Campaign Language: Australia’s Identity Anxiety” (Anthem Press, 2017)
12 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Politics, Media and Campaign Language: Australia’s Identity Anxiety (Anthem Press, 2017), Stephanie Brookes, a Lecturer in Journali...
John Powers, “The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism” (Oxford UP, 2016)
07 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his recent book, The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2016...
Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, “Marketing the Third Reich: Persuasion, Packaging, and Propaganda” (Routledge, 2017)
06 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
One of the defining characteristics of the Nazi regime that ruled Germany from 1933 until 1945 was its attention to presentation as a means of winning...
Marvin Scott, “As I Saw It: A Reporter’s Intrepid Journey” (Beaufort Books, 2017)
31 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Marvin Scott’s new book, As I Saw It: A Reporter’s Intrepid Journey (Beaufort Books, 2017) tells 26 stories of memorable people and events that th...
Free Speech and Free Thinking with Seana Shiffrin
19 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Seana Shiffrin is Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice at UCLA. She defends the “thinker theory” of freed...