New Books in Communications

Jeff Kosseff, "Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

24 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Thanks to the First Amendment, Americans enjoy a rare privilege: the constitutional right to lie. And although controversial, they should continue to ...

Allison M. Prasch, "The World Is Our Stage: The Global Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

19 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Allison M. Prasch, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a new book that focuses on the w...

Mukti Lakhi Mangharam, "Freedom Inc.: Gendered Capitalism in New Indian Literature and Culture" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

17 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

While globalization is often credited with the eradication of 'traditional' constraints tied to gender and caste, in reality the opening up of the Ind...

Smith Mehta, "The New Screen Ecology in India: Digital Transformation of Media" (British Film Institute, 2023)

15 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The New Screen Ecology in India: Digital Transformation of Media (British Film Institute, 2023), Smith Mehta takes a deep dive into the world...

Stephen Bales, "Serapis: The Sacred Library and Its Declericalization" (Library Juice Press, 2021)

12 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Greco-Egyptian syncretistic god Serapis was used by the 3rd century BCE Ptolemaic pharaohs to impose Greek cultural hegemony and consolidate polit...

Valentina Marcella, "Laughing Matters: Graphic Satire Reckoning with the 1980 Coup in Turkey" (Istituto per l’Oriente C. A. Nallino, 2022)

12 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Valentina Marcella's Laughing Matters: Graphic Satire Reckoning with the 1980 Coup in Turkey (Istituto per l’Oriente C. A. Nallino 2022) focuses...

Kate Polak, "Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics" (Ohio State UP, 2017)

10 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics (Ohio State UP, 2017) explores an often-overlooked genre of graphic narratives: those ...

Johannes C. P. Schmid, "Frames and Framing in Documentary Comics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

09 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Frames and Framing in Documentary Comics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), Johannes Schmid’s new book considers documentary comics in relationship t...

Harriet E. H. Earle, "Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War" (UP of Mississippi, 2017)

08 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Conflict and trauma remain among the most prevalent themes in film and literature. Comics has never avoided such narratives, and comics artists are wr...

Stephanie R. Larson, "What It Feels Like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)

08 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What it feels like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture (Penn State Press, 2021) by Dr. Stephanie Larson interrogates an underexamined...

Books in Early Modern Europe

07 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If you are reading this, it’s probably hard—nearly impossible—to imagine a world without writing—without print, books, newspapers, signs, graf...

Mara Mills and Rebecca Sanchez, eds., "Crip Authorship: Disability as Method" (NYU Press, 2023)

06 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A full transcript of the interview is available for accessibility. Mara Mills and Rebecca Sanchez's Crip Authorship: Disability as Method (NYU Pre...

Taylor Lorenz, "Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

03 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Acclaimed Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz presents a groundbreaking social history of the internet—revealing how online influence and the c...

Ben Whaley, "Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

02 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ben Whaley’s Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games (U Michigan Press 2023) examines the pathbreaking engagemen...

Michael D. Smith, "The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World" (MIT Press, 2023)

29 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For too long, our system of higher education has been defined by scarcity: scarcity in enrollment, scarcity in instruction, and scarcity in credential...

Kashmir Hill, "Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It" (Random House, 2023)

28 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 p...

Andrew J. Hoffman, "The Engaged Scholar: Expanding the Impact of Academic Research in Today’s World" (Stanford UP, 2021)

23 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Society and democracy are ever threatened by the fall of fact. Rigorous analysis of facts, the hard boundary between truth and opinion, and fidelity t...

Federico Alvarez Igarzábal, "Time and Space in Video Games: A Cognitive-Formalist Approach" (Transcript, 2020)

23 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Video games are temporal artifacts: They change with time as players interact with them in accordance with rules. In Time and Space in Video Games: A...

Diana Rickard, "The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence" (NYU Press, 2023)

23 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence (NYU Press, 2023) by Dr. Diana Rickard examines how serialized ...

Rahul Ranjan, "The Political Life of Memory: Birsa Munda in Contemporary India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

22 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How do affective sites such as memorials and statues produce political visions, emotions, and opportunities? And how are they used strategically to fu...

Phaedra C. Pezzullo, "Beyond Straw Men: Plastic Pollution and Networked Cultures of Care" (U California Press, 2023)

22 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Addressing plastics can feel overwhelming. Guilt, shame, anger, hurt, fear, dismissiveness, and despair abound. Beyond Straw Men: Plastic Pollution a...

Scott Selberg, "Mediating Alzheimer's: Cognition and Personhood" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

21 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With no known cause or cure despite a century of research, Alzheimer's disease is a true medical mystery. In Mediating Alzheimer's: Cognition and Per...

Takeo Rivera, "Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity" (Oxford UP, 2022)

19 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There are few grand narratives that loom over Asian Americans more than the “model minority.” While many Asian Americanist scholars and activists ...

David Simpson, "Engaging Violence: Civility and the Reach of Literature" (Stanford UP, 2022)

19 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Recent thinking has resuscitated civility as an important paradigm for engaging with a violence that must be deemed endemic to our lives. But, while i...

Avery Dame-Griff, "The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet" (NYU Press, 2023)

17 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Avery Dame-Griff's The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet (NYU Press, 2023) explores how the rise of the internet shaped transg...

The Other Side of the Desk: A Discussion with "The Conversation" Editor Emily Costello

14 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can writing for the general public help scholars to democratize education? Today, The Conversation editor Emily Costello takes us behind the sce...

A Better Way to Buy Books

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...

Robyn Muir, "The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis" (Bristol UP, 2023)

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Disney Princesses are a billion-dollar industry, known and loved by children across the globe. In The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Anal...

Prachi Deshpande, "Scripts of Power: Writing, Language Practices, and Cultural History in Western India" (Permanent Black, 2023)

09 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Scripts of Power: Writing, Language Practices, and Cultural History in Western India (Permanent Black, 2023) is a cultural history of western India ...

Marc Bonner, "Open World Structures: Architecture, Urban and Natural Landscape in the Computer Game" (Büchner-Verlag, 2023)

07 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What role do algorithms play in the construction of images and the representation of the world and weather in computer games? How does the design of r...

Altman Yuzhu Peng, "A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere" (Palgrave Pivot, 2020)

06 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere (Palgrave Pivot, 2020), Altman Yuzhu Peng articulates how feminism and pseudo-feminism be...

Taylor Cowdery, "Matter and Making in Early English Poetry: Literary Production from Chaucer to Sidney" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

06 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Is the raw material of literature the paper, ink, vellum, paphyrus, and increasingly electronic data that it is inscribed on? Or is the stuff of liter...

Stephen Ramsay, "On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

06 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephen Ramsey's On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) is a witty and incisive exploration of th...

Gennifer Weisenfeld, "Gas Mask Nation: Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

05 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Airplanes, gas masks, and bombs were common images in wartime Japan. Yet amid these emblems of anxiety, tasty caramels were offered to children with p...

Ari Ezra Waldman, "Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

02 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power (Cambridge UP, 2021), Ari Ezra Waldman exposes precisely how the tech in...

Diana W. Anselmo, "A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood" (U California Press, 2023)

02 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood (University of California Press, 2023), Diana W. Anselmo queers the ea...

Digital Repression in Thailand

01 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How serious an issue is digital repression in Thailand? Who is behind it? And what effects does it have on Thai people? Listen to Janjira Sombatpoonsi...

Dagmar Schafer, "Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property" (MIT Press, 2023)

30 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of...

James S. Damico et al., "Commemorative Literacies and Labors of Justice: Resistance, Reconciliation, and Recovery in Buenos Aires and Beyond" (Routledge, 2021)

30 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Commemorative Literacies and Labors of Justice: Resistance, Reconciliation, and Recovery in Buenos Aires and Beyond (Routledge, 2021) examines litera...

Denise Gigante, "Book Madness: A Story of Book Collectors in America" (Yale UP, 2022)

29 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In February 1848, a book auction took place in Astor House, No. 7, on the corner of Broadway and Vesey in lower Manhattan, New York. By all accounts, ...

Karima K. Jeffrey-Legette, "Speculative Film and Moving Images by or about Black Women and Girls" (Lexington Books, 2022)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Karima K. Jeffrey-Legette's book Speculative Film and Moving Images by or about Black Women and Girls (Lexington Books, 2022) examines depictions of...

Vanessa I. Corredera, "Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vanessa I. Corredera’s book Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America (Edinburgh Univeristy Press, 2022) looks at how that seventee...

Gary Smith, "Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science" (Oxford UP, 2023)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There is no doubt science is currently suffering from a credibility crisis. Gary Smith's book Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on...

The Future of Talking: A Discussion with Shane O'Mara

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Talking is a defining part of what makes us human – we are almost constantly in dialogue but what purpose does all this conversation serve? Both for...

Journalism History in Macau: A Abelha da China in its 200 Years

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did the first newspaper in Macau come into being? What was the first foreign language newspaper on Chinese soil about? How was the dynamic between...

Chesya Burke, "Hero Me Not: The Containment of the Most Powerful Black, Female Superhero" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

First introduced in the pages of X-Men, Storm is probably the most recognized Black female superhero. She is also one of the most powerful characters...

Chesya Burke, "Hero Me Not: The Containment of the Most Powerful Black, Female Superhero" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

First introduced in the pages of X-Men, Storm is probably the most recognized Black female superhero. She is also one of the most powerful characters...

PostScript: The Barbie Movie: A Conversation about a Cinematic and Cultural Event

23 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode of POSTSCRIPT explores and examines director Greta Gerwig’s film, Barbie. This Warner Brothers’ movie has been in theaters for ...

Stefan Heinrich Simond, "Pixelated Madness: The Construction of Mental Illnesses and Psychiatric Institutions in Video Games" (Hülsbusch, 2023)

23 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between madness and video games has been notoriously tense. In an abundance of titles, stereotypes and stigmatisations can be found—...

Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, and the Future of Academic Publishing

22 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Avi Staiman, CEO of Academic Language Experts discusses the how advancements in artificial intelligence are shaping academic publishing. Avi offers ...

Brooke Kroeger, "Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism" (Knopf, 2023)

21 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism (Knopf, 2023) is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put...

Academic Publishers Grapple with Advances in AI

19 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Niko Pfund joins the podcast to discuss the value of scientific content for building out Large Language Models and some of the challenges around track...

Net Smart: How to Thrive Online

19 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Like it or not, knowing how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is an essential ingredient to personal succ...

The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga

18 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Long ago, in 1985, personal computers came in two general categories: the friendly, childish game machine used for fun (exemplified by Atari and Commo...

Whisper Networks: A Discussion with Carrie Ann Johnson

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is a Whisper Network? What can you gain from being in one, and what is expected of the network members? Not everybody is invited is into a Whispe...

Ramzi Fawaz, "The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics" (NYU Press, 2016)

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is Ramzi Fawaz, the Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published by NYU Press in 2016, The New Mutan...

Jieun Kiaer, "Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Jieun Kiaer provides an in-depth discussion of emoji use in a glo...

Scott Skinner-Thompson, "Privacy at the Margins" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Limited legal protections for privacy leave minority communities vulnerable to concrete injuries and violence when their information is exposed. In P...

Networked: The New Social Operating System

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, twe...

Christopher D. Bahl and Stefan Hanß, "Scribal Practice and the Global Cultures of Colophons, 1400–1800" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Scribal Practice and the Global Cultures of Colophons, 1400–1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) is the first to chart the global diversity of colophons...

David Humphrey, "The Time of Laughter: Comedy and the Media Cultures of Japan" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

David Humphrey’s The Time of Laughter: Comedy and the Media Cultures of Japan (U Michigan Press, 2023) examines the roles of mediated laughter in ...

Indra’s Net and the Midas Touch: Living Sustainably in a Connected World

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We live today in a global web of interdependence, connected technologically, economically, politically, and socially. As a result of these expanding a...

Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation

14 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hello Avatar Or, {llSay(0, Hello, Avatar ); is a tiny piece of user-friendly code that allows us to program our virtual selves. In Hello Avatar, B. C...

The Future of Underground/Sea Cables: A Discussion with Henry Farrell

12 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How much of US power is underground? We hear a lot about the US military assets used on land, on the sea, and in the air - but not much about what’s...

Chris Wiggins and Matthew L Jones, "How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms" (Norton, 2023)

10 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From facial recognition―capable of checking people into flights or identifying undocumented residents―to automated decision systems that inform wh...

Cory Doctorow, "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation" (Verso, 2023)

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Big Tech locked us into their systems by making their platforms hard to leave by design. The impossibility of staying connected to people on their pla...

Len Niehoff and Thomas Sullivan, "Free Speech: From Core Values to Current Debates" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why do we protect free speech? What values does it serve? How has the Supreme Court interpreted the First Amendment? What has the Court gotten right a...

Daniel Foliard, "The Violence of Colonial Photography" (Manchester UP, 2022)

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The late nineteenth century witnessed a rapid increase in colonial conflicts throughout the French and British empires. It was also the period in whic...

Jeff Deutsch, "In Praise of Good Bookstores" (Princeton UP, 2022)

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton UP, 2022), Jeff Deutsch--th...

The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games

07 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We may think of video games as being "fun," but in The Art of Failure, Jesper Juul claims that this is almost entirely mistaken. When we play video ga...

Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The world is filling with ever more kinds of media, in ever more contexts and formats. Glowing rectangles have become part of the scene; screens, larg...

Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation

05 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and...

Olga Fedorenko, "Flower of Capitalism: South Korean Advertising at a Crossroads" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)

05 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An ethnography of advertising in postmillennial South Korea, Flower of Capitalism: South Korean Advertising at a Crossroads (U Hawaii Press, 2022) d...

Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation

04 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and...

Why Photography Matters

03 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Photography matters, writes Jerry Thompson, because of how it works--not only as an artistic medium but also as a way of knowing. With this provocativ...

Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program

02 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In July 1969, ninety-four percent of American televisions were tuned to coverage of Apollo 11's mission to the moon. How did space exploration, once t...

Kathryn Cramer Brownell, "24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News" (Princeton UP, 2023)

01 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated...

Shaul Shenhav, "Analyzing Social Narratives" (Routledge, 2015)

31 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Analyzing Social Narratives (Routledge, 2015) is one of the concise and informative volumes in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, whose t...

Alice E. Marwick, "The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media" (Yale UP, 2023)

30 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Online privacy is under constant attack by social media and big data technologies. But we cannot rely on individual actions to remedy this—it is a m...

Jade E. Davis, "The Other Side of Empathy" (Duke UP, 2023)

30 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Other Side of Empathy (Duke UP, 2023), Jade E. Davis contests the value of empathy as an affective or critical tool. Whether focusing on tech...

Rob Eschmann,, "When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age" (U California Press, 2023)

29 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From cell phone footage of police killing unarmed Black people to leaked racist messages and even comments from friends and family on social media, on...

Nina Lager Vestberg, "Picture Research: The Work of Intermediation from Pre-Photography to Post-Digitization" (MIT Press, 2023)

26 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Picture Research: The Work of Intermediation from Pre-Photography to Post-Digitization (MIT Press, 2023) focuses on how pictures were saved, stored, ...

Penelope Ingram, "Imperiled Whiteness: How Hollywood and Media Make Race in 'Postracial' America" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)

26 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Imperiled Whiteness: How Hollywood and Media Make Race in "Postracial" America (University Press of Mississippi, 2023), Penelope Ingram examines ...

Po-Shek Fu, "Hong Kong Media and Asia's Cold War" (Oxford UP, 2023)

26 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

British Hong Kong was a historical anomaly in the Cold War. It experienced no "hot war" or organized movement for independence, and yet it was a key b...

The Art of Translation: A Discussion with Anne Birkenhauer Molad

22 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Translation is a mysterious process that combines the elements of writing – rhythm and voice, meaning, structure and nuance – with the challenge o...

Usha Raman and Sumana Kasturi, "Childscape, Mediascape: Children and Media in India" (Orient BlackSwan, 2023)

21 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Children are considered to be a group of special interest by media scholars and advocates, especially because they are seen as a vulnerable group whos...

Miranda Corcoran, "Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture: Teen Witches" (U Wales Press, 2022)

19 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture: Teen Witches (University of Wales Press, 2022) by Miranda Corcoran is a study in teenage wit...

Aaron A. Reed, "50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to AI Dungeon" (2023)

19 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon is an extensively researched book chronicling the first half-century of interactive fiction...

Xiaoning Lu, "Moulding the Socialist Subject: Cinema and Chinese Modernity (1949-1966)" (Brill, 2020)

18 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Xiaoning Lu received her BA and MA in Chinese Literature and Language from Nanjing University and Fudan University respectively. She then earned her P...

Nick Witham, "Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

18 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this lively and far-reaching text, Nick Witham (University College London) tells the stories of five postwar historians who changed the way ordina...

Brianna Holt, "In Our Shoes: On Being a Young Black Woman in Not-So 'Post-Racial' America" (Plume Books, 2023)

16 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Part memoir, part cultural critique, In Our Shoes: On Being a Young Black Woman in Not-So 'Post-Racial' America (Plume Books, 2023) uses pop culture...

Vivian Nun Halloran, "Caribbean American Narratives of Belonging" (Ohio State UP, 2023)

16 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Caribbean American Narratives of Belonging (Ohio State University Press, 2023), Vivian Nun Halloran analyzes memoirs, picture books, comic book...

Tom Mustill, "How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication" (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)

13 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill—the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty‑ton humpback whale breach...

Dana Rubin, "Speaking While Female: 75 Extraordinary Speeches by American Women" (RealClear, 2023)

13 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From Dr. Painter restoring the words of Sojourner Truth’s original speech, to VP-candidate Kamala Harris enduring through repeated interruptions at ...

Nour Halabi, "Radical Hospitality: American Policy, Media, and Immigration" (Rutgers UP, 2022)

13 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How should we understand contemporary migration policy? In Radical Hospitality: American Policy, Media, and Immigration (Rutgers UP, 2022), Nour Ha...

Randall Patnode, "The Synchronized Society: Time and Control From Broadcasting to the Internet" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

12 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Synchronized Society: Time and Control From Broadcasting to the Internet (Rutgers University Press, 2023) by Dr. Randall Patnode traces the histo...

Robin Steedman, "Creative Hustling: Women Making and Distributing Films from Nairobi" (MIT Press, 2023)

06 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future of the global creative economy? In Creative Hustling: Women Making and Distributing Films from Nairobi (MIT Press, 2023), Robin ...

Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kathryn C. Higgins, "Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt" (Polity Press, 2023)

05 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Who is believed in our mediated world? In Believability: Sexual Violence, Media and the Politics of Doubt (Polity Press, 2023),  Sarah Banet-Weise...

Suk-Young Kim, "Surviving Squid Game: A Guide to K-Drama, Netflix, and Global Streaming Wars" (Applause Books, 2023)

04 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Surviving Squid Game: A Guide to K-Drama, Netflix, and Global Streaming Wars (Applause Books, 2023), scholar Suk-Young Kim reflects on Netflix's ...

Jennifer Caplan, "Funny, You Don't Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials" (Wayne State UP, 2023)

04 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this comprehensive approach to Jewish humor focused on the relationship between humor and American Jewish practice, Jennifer Caplan calls us to ado...