New Books in Performing Arts
Episodes
Gavin Butt, "No Machos Or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk" (Duke UP, 2022)
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do art schools influence music? In No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk (Duke UP, 2022), Gavin Butt, a Professor of ...
David Savran, "Tell It to the World: The Broadway Musical Abroad" (Oxford UP, 2024)
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tell It to the World: The Broadway Musical Abroad (Oxford UP, 2024) offers a look at how the Broadway musical travels the world, influencing and eve...
Reading Taylor Swift as a Cultural and Political Text
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the UConn Popcast, and Taylor Swift is by some measures the most popular person on the planet. Her periodic reinventions set the mass cultural ...
Xin Gu, "Cultural Work and Creative Subjectivity: Recentralising the Artist Critique and Social Networks in the Cultural Industries" (Routledge, 2023)
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can artists survive today? In Cultural Work and Creative Subjectivity: Recentralising the Artist Critique and Social Networks in the Cultural Ind...
Priyanka Basu, "The Poet’s Song: ‘Folk’ and its Cultural Politics in South Asia" (Routledge, 2023)
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can culture be authentic in the modern world? In The Poet's Song: Folk and its Cultural Politics in South Asia (Rouitledge, 2023), Dr Priyanka ...
Justin Owen Rawlins, "Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance" (U Texas Press, 2024)
03 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: “Method acting.” The first reception-based analysis of film acting, ...
Joseph Cone, "Seeing Opera Anew: A Cultural and Biological Perspective" (Routledge, 2023)
03 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What people ultimately want from music-drama, audience research suggests, is to be absorbed in a story that engages their feelings, even moves them de...
Anna Dako, "Dances with Sheep: On RePairing the HumanNature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving towards Wellbeing" (Intellect Books, 2023)
03 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anna Dako,'s book Dances with Sheep: On RePairing the HumanNature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving towards Wellbeing (Intellect Books, 2023) p...
Jesse David Fox, "Comedy Book:: How Comedy Conquered Culture–and the Magic That Makes It Work" (FSG, 2023)
02 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Comedy Book:: How Comedy Conquered Culture–and the Magic That Makes It Work (FSG, 2023), Jesse David Fox—the country’s most definitive voi...
Marchella Ward, "Blindness and Spectatorship in Ancient and Modern Theatres: Towards New Ways of Looking and Looking Back" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
01 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The use of disability as a metaphor is ubiquitous in popular culture – nowhere more so than in the myths, stereotypes and tropes around blindness. T...
Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama, "The Play of the Feminine" (HASP, 2023)
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Tamil Nadu, the nine-night autumnal Navarātri festival can be viewed as a celebration of feminine powers in association with the goddess. Ina Mari...
Horace J. Maxile, Jr. and Kristen M. Turner, "Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher's Guide" (Routledge, 2022)
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher’s Guide provides concrete information and approaches that will help instructors incl...
Stanley Wells, "What Was Shakespeare Really Like?" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Stanley Wells is one of the world's greatest authorities on William Shakespeare. Here he brings a lifetime of learning and reflection to bear on s...
Imani D. Owens, "Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Black Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean" (Columbia UP, 2023)
23 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the first half of the twentieth century, Black hemispheric culture grappled with the legacies of colonialism, U.S. empire, and Jim Crow. As writers...
Kareem Khubchandani, "Decolonize Drag" (OR Books, 2023)
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kareem Khubchandani’s book Decolonize Drag (OR Books, 2024) explores the intricate interplay among gender, colonialism, and drag performance. It i...
Bryce Henson, "Emergent Quilombos: Black Life and Hip-Hop in Brazil" (U Texas Press, 2023)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Known as Black Rome, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, is a predominantly Black city. The local art, food, and dance are closely linked to the population's A...
Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, "Kubrick: An Odyssey" (Pegasus Books, 2024)
06 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The definitive biography of the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange, presenting the most in-depth portrait yet o...
Mark Guarino, "Country and Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The untold story of Chicago's pivotal role as a country and folk music capital. Chicago is revered as a musical breeding ground, having launched major...
Courtney Brannon Donoghue, "The Value Gap: Female-Driven Films from Pitch to Premiere" (U Texas Press, 2023)
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Conversations about gender equity in the workplace accelerated in the 2010s, with debates inside Hollywood specifically pointing to broader systemic p...
Murray Forman and Mark V. Campbell, "Hip Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production" (Intellect, 2023)
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the vast popularity and cultural influence of hip-hop, efforts to archive its history are still in fairly early stages. Hip-Hop Archives: The...
Michael O'Malley, "The Beat Cop: Chicago's Chief O'Neill and the Creation of Irish Music" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
03 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Francis O’Neill (1848–1936) was a Chicago police officer and a folk music collector. Michael O’Malley connects these two seemingly unrelated act...
Merin Shobhana Xavier, "The Dervishes of the North: Rumi, Whirling, and the Making of Sufism in Canada" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
02 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic and poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) is a popular spiritual icon. His legacy is sustained within the mystical...
Sheila Marie Bock, "Claiming Space: Performing the Personal Through Decorated Mortarboards" (Utah State UP, 2023)
02 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Claiming Space: Performing the Personal through Decorated Mortarboards (Utah State University Press, 2023) by Dr. Sheila Bock examines the growing tr...
Andrew David Jackson, "The Late and Post-Dictatorship Cinephilia Boom and Art Houses in South Korea" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Andy Jackson’s The Late and Post-Dictatorship Cinephilia Boom and Art Houses in South Korea (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) examines an une...
Eugenio Refini, "Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy" (Legenda, 2022)
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As per William Shakespeare, ‘all the world’s a stage’. But what if the human soul was a stage too? What if the stage of the world and the stage ...
Aaron Carnes, "In Defense of Ska: The Ska Now More Than Ever Edition" (Clash Books, 2023)
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The era of ska shame is officially over, and ska fans no longer need to hide in the basement, skanking alone. The creator of the popular podcast In D...
Jessica Goethals, "Margherita Costa, Diva of the Baroque Court" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
20 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Roman singer, courtesan, and writer Margherita Costa won prominence and fame across the courts of Italy and France during the mid-seventeenth cent...
Aniefiok Ekpoudom, "Where We Come From: Rap, Home & Hope in Modern Britain" (Faber and Faber, 2024)
19 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why is music important to place, and place important to music? In Where We Come From: Rap, Home and Hope in Modern Britain (Faber and Faber, 2024), ...
Adriana Helbig, "ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid" (Oxford UP, 2023)
19 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Adriana Helbig's book ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid (Oxford University Press, 2023) offers a micro ethnography of economic ne...
Miles P. Grier, "Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery (University of Virginia Press, 2023), Miles P. Grier argues that...
Michael Quinn Dudley, "The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy" (Cambridge Scholars, 2023)
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For nearly 200 years, people have questioned the identity of Shakespeare; however, this debate is often dismissed by most scholars as “just a conspi...
Matt Singer, "Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023)
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, if you wanted to know if a movie was worth seeing, you didn’t check out Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB. You asked whether Siskel & Ebert ...
Selby Wynn Schwartz, "The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives" (U Michigan Press, 2019)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Selby Wynn Schwartz writes about gender, performance, and the politics of embodiment. Her articles have been published in Women & Performance, PAJ, Da...
Matthew Kennedy, "On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2024)
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the oceans of ink devoted to the monumental movie star/businesswoman/political activist Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (1932-2011), her beauty and not-s...
Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay, "Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan" (U Texas Press, 2023)
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A literary and visual exploration of the songs of Steely Dan. Steely Dan's songs are exercises in fictional world-building. No one else in the classic...
Elizabeth Eva Leach, "Medieval Sex Lives: The Sounds of Courtly Intimacy on the Francophone Borders" (Cornell UP, 2023)
06 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How was music important to medieval society? In Medieval Sex Lives:The Sounds of Courtly Intimacy on the Francophone Borders (Cornell UP, 2023), Pr...
Plot
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Pardis Dabashi tells us about plot. A plot consists of a change with stakes that establish norms. This seemingly simpl...
W. K. Stratton, "The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 f...
Patrick Ffrench, "Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Suspicious of what he called the spectator's "sticky" adherence to the screen, Roland Barthes had a cautious attitude towards cinema. Falling into a h...
Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016)
30 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Most scholars of popular music use songs, artists, and clubs as the key texts and sites in their exploration of the social, cultural, political, and e...
Bryan McCann, "The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era" (U Alabama Press, 2017)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Bryan McCann (he/his)--Associate Professor of Com...
Walter Greason and Tim Fielder, "The Graphic History of Hip Hop" (NYC Department of Education, 2023)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hip Hop turned 50 this year. It has been five decades since DJ Cool Herc played a party in the Bronx that gave birth to a global cultural revolution. ...
Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt, "Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry" (Oxford UP, 2023)
23 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt tells a new ...
Nate Patrin, "The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
23 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), Nate Patrin examines how ...
Michelle R. Scott, "T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners' Booking Association in Jazz-Age America" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Black vaudevillians and entertainers joked that T.O.B.A. stood for "tough on black artists." But the Theater Owner's Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) pl...
Lawrence Sherman and Dennis Plies, "Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music" (Columbia UP, 2023)
16 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Whenever a person engages with music--when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or ...
Between Jesus and Krishna: Christian Encounters with South Indian Temple Dance
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the eight national dances of India, bharatanatyam, partly originates from the area around Tranquebar. During the time that Tranquebar was a Dan...
Rob Harvilla, "60 Songs That Explain The 90s" (Twelve, 2023)
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A companion to the #1 music podcast on Spotify, this book takes listeners through the greatest hits that define a weirdly undefinable decade. The 1990...
Ervin Malakaj, "Anders als Die Andern" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Released in 1919, "Anders als die Andern" (Different from the Others) stunned audiences with its straightforward depiction of queer love. Supporters c...
Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel, "Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine" (Callaway, 2023)
09 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Several years ago, a treasure trove containing some 6,000 original Bob Dylan manuscripts was revealed to exist. Their destination? Tulsa, Oklahoma. Th...
Hilary French, "Ballroom: A People’s History of Dancing" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early twentieth century, American ragtime and the Parisian tango fuelled a dancing craze in Britain. Public ballrooms were built throughout the...
Ramsey Lewis and Aaron Cohen, "Gentleman of Jazz: A Life in Music" (Blackstone, 2023)
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This immersive new autobiography provides insight into the early life and illustrious career of the late great Ramsey Lewis, one of the most popular j...
Daniel Herbert, "Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film" (U California Press, 2023)
02 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Herbert's book Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film (U California Press, 2023) tells the improbable stor...
Jackie Lubeck, "To The Good People of Gaza: Theatre for Young People by Jackie Lubeck and Theatre Day Productions" (Methuen Drama, 2022)
02 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
To The Good People of Gaza: Theatre for Young People by Jackie Lubeck and Theatre Day Productions (Methuen Drama, 2022) ties together nineteen plays...
Poppy Corbett et al., "Creative Histories of Witchcraft: France, 1790–1940" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How can researchers study magic without destroying its mystery? Drawing on a collaborative project between the playwright Dr. Poppy Corbett, the poet ...
Richard Schoch, "Shakespeare’s House: A Window onto his Life and Legacy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the wide realm of Shakespeare worship, the house in Stratford-upon-Avon where William Shakespeare was born in 1564 – known colloquially as the 'B...
Vid Simoniti, "Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto" (Yale UP, 2023)
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto (Yale UP, 2023) puts forward an account of contemporary art’s political ambitions and potent...
Michael Rushton, "The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
25 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Should governments fund the arts? In The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Michael Rushton, Co-Director...
Mia Mask, "Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
24 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know Sidney Poitier was a western icon? In a genre best known for John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, African American actors and directors have ...
Ina Rupprecht, ed., "Persecution, Collaboration, Resistance: Music in the ‘Reichskommissariat Norwegen’ (1940–45)" (Waxmann Verlag, 2020)
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Germany invaded Norway on 9 April 1940, the long lasting bilateral relations changed fundamentally. Immediately, the administration of the ‘Rei...
Warren Zanes, "Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska' (Crown, 2023)
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen's hugely successful album The River should h...
Pavitra Sundar, "Listening with a Feminist Ear: Soundwork in Bombay Cinema" (U Michigan Press, 2023)
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Pavitra Sundar's book Listening with a Feminist Ear: Soundwork in Bombay Cinema (U Michigan Press, 2023) is a study of the cultural politics and pos...
Brigid Cohen, "Musical Migration and Imperial New York: Early Cold War Scenes" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The heart of Brigid Cohen’s Musical Migration and Imperial New York: Early Cold War Scenes (University of Chicago Press, 2022) are the connections...
Adrien Sebro, "Scratchin' and Survivin': Hustle Economics and the Black Sitcoms of Tandem Productions" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The 1970s was a golden age for representations of African American life on TV sitcoms: Sanford & Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons. Surprisingly, nea...
Ralph H. Craig III, "Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner" (Eerdmans, 2023)
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you don’t know Tina Turner’s spirituality, you don’t know Tina. When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll in th...
What Reality TV Says About Us
08 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Reality TV shapes and reflects how we see ourselves, and what we regard as normal. Professor Danielle J. Lindemann watched thousands of hours of reali...
Michael Newton, "It's a Wonderful Life" (British Film Institute, 2023)
08 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath...
This Will Change Your Perspective on James Bond
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Bond movies have influenced portrayals of masculinity and femininity for decades, but the Daniel Craig-era saw a revolution in depictions of sex, ...
Michael Kaler, "Get Shown the Light: Improvisation and Transcendence in the Music of the Grateful Dead" (Duke UP, 2023)
06 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Of all the musical developments of rock in the 1960s, one in particular fundamentally changed the music’s structure and listening experience: the in...
Greg Beets and Richard Whymark, "A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin" (U Texas Press, 2023)
05 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ask anyone outside of Austin what they know about the city and chances are the first thing they'll mention is the music. While the Armadillo Era has b...
Michael Custodis, "Music and Resistance: Cultural Defense During the German Occupation of Norway 1940-45" (Waxmann Verlag, 2021)
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The role of music during the German occupation of Norway (1940-45) proves to be an exceptional case for cultural opposition in a dictatorship. Few fam...
Jacqueline R. Braitman, "She Damn Near Ran the Studio: The Extraordinary Lives of Ida R. Koverman" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I am happy to be interviewing historian and author Dr. Jacqueline R. Braitman about her very engaging biography, She Damn Near Ran t...
"We are all latecomers": Martin Puchner's "Culture" (JP, EF)
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Recall This Book listeners already know the inimitable Martin Puchner (Professor of English and Theater at Harvard, editor of more than one Norton A...
Jennifer Saltzstein, "Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France: Toward an Environmental History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
01 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France: Toward an Environmental History (Oxford University Press, 2023) investigates how northern ...
Scott Eyman, "Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The remarkable, must-read story of Charlie Chaplin’s years of exile from the United States during the postwar Red Scare, and how it ruined his film ...
Henrik Fürst and Erik Nylander, "The Value of Art Education: Cultural Engagements at the Swedish Folk High Schools" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
30 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is art education worthwhile? In The Value of Art Education: Cultural Engagements at the Swedish Folk High Schools (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), Henri...
Shakespeare's "The Tempest" Part 3: The Language
30 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Part 3 features close-readings from Professor Laurie Maguire of some of the play’s key speeches: Caliban’s extraordinarily lyrical description of ...
Lesley Nicole Braun, "Congo's Dancers: Women and Work in Kinshasa" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
29 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with Lesley Nicole Braun to talk about her new book on Congo's dancers. Dance music plays a central role in the cultural, social, relig...
Pat Thomson and Christine Hall, "Schools and Cultural Citizenship: Arts Education for Life" (Routledge, 2023)
28 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why study the arts in school? In Schools and Cultural Citizenship: Arts Education for Life (Routledge, 2023), Pat Thomson, Professor of Education ...
Marisel C. Moreno, "Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art" (U Texas Press, 2022)
27 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary li...
Eric G. Wilson, "Point Blank" (British Film Institute, 2023)
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John Boorman's Point Blank (1967) has long been recognized as one of the seminal films of the sixties, with its revisionary mix of genres including ...
Shakespeare's "The Tempest" Part 2: Characters and Questions
23 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With Professor Laurie Maguire, Part 2 explores the play’s many ambiguities — its uncertain geography, mental space, and genre — and how they ref...
Scott Feinberg, “The Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time” (2023)
21 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the October 12, 2023 issue of The Hollywood Reporter, Scott Feinberg offered an annotated list of the 100 greatest film books of all time. Drawi...
Grant H. Kester, "The Sovereign Self: Aesthetic Autonomy from the Enlightenment to the Avant-Garde" (Duke UP, 2023)
21 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Sovereign Self: Aesthetic Autonomy from the Enlightenment to the Avant-Garde (Duke UP, 2023), Grant Kester examines the evolving discourse of...
Shakespeare's "The Tempest" Part 1: The Story
16 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Tempest, one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote, draws on themes and stories that fascinated him throughout his career while also taking his art ...
Adam Blum et al., "Here I'm Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis" (Columbia UP, 2023)
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today we have a group session (read: an hour and a half) with the authors Adam Blum, Peter Goldberg, and Michal Levin discussing their new book He...
Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik, "Maghreb Noir: The Militant-Artists of North Africa and the Struggle for a Pan-African, Postcolonial Future" (Stanford UP, 2023)
11 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Upon their independence, Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian governments turned to the Global South and offered military and financial aid to Black liber...
Marlena Williams, "Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist" (Mad Creek Books, 2023)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Never watch The Exorcist, Marlena Williams's mother told her, just as she'd been told by her own mother as a Catholic teen in rural Oregon when the h...
Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" Part 3: The Language
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Part 3, Professor Simon Palfrey offers close-readings of some of the play’s most significant scenes. You’ll hear the play’s dark energies eme...
Geraint D'Arcy, "Mise en scène, Acting, and Space in Comics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
07 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Geraint D'Arcy's book Mise en scène, Acting, and Space in Comics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) explores some of the less frequently questioned ideas w...
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...
Thomas E. Boomershine, "First-Century Gospel Storytellers and Audiences: The Gospels as Performance Literature" (Cascade Books, 2022)
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Boomershine, one of the pioneers of performance criticism for biblical texts, joined the New Books Network to discuss the publication of First-Ce...
Katrin Nahidi, "The Cultural Politics of Art in Iran: Modernism, Exhibitions, and Art Production" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Modernist Iranian art represents a highly diverse field of cultural production deeply involved in discussing questions of modernity and modernization ...
Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" Part 2: Characters and Questions
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With Professor Simon Palfrey, Part 2 looks closely at the play’s characters, and especially at the intelligence and swiftness of Juliet. You’ll se...
Melanie Williams, "A Taste of Honey" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
01 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What makes a film a classic? In A Taste of Honey (Bloomsbury, 2023), published as part of the BFI Film Classics series, Melanie Williams, a Profes...
Kiana Fitzgerald, "Ode to Hip-Hop: 50 Albums That Define 50 Years of Trailblazing Music" (Running Press Adult, 2023)
30 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From underground roots to mainstream popularity, hip-hop's influence on music and entertainment around the world has been nothing short of extraordina...
Peter Reed, "Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America: Revolution, Race and Popular Performance" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
American culture maintained a complicated relationship with Haiti from its revolutionary beginnings onward. In Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century Am...
Hieyoon Kim, "Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea" (U California Press, 2023)
27 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before South Korea became the democracy and media powerhouse that it is today, it underwent several decades of authoritarian rule during the Cold War ...
Jonathan Mael, "Harlem World: How Hip Hop's Super Showdown Changed Music Forever" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
July 3, 1981, was a pivotal night for the future of America's newest art form: hip hop. In New York's Harlem World Club, the Fantastic Romantic Five a...
Jessica Lowell Mason and Nicole Crevar, "Madwomen in Social Justice Movements, Literatures, and Art" (Vernon Press, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jessica Lowell Mason and Nicole Crevar's Madwomen in Social Justice Movements, Literatures, and Art (Vernon Press, 2023) boldly reasserts the impor...