New Books in Performing Arts
Episodes
James Charney, "Madness at the Movies: Understanding Mental Illness through Film" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
02 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies: U...
Shakespeare's "Othello" Part 1: The Story
01 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare’s Othello is the only one of his tragedies to feature a black male protagonist. Othello is a black general who elopes with a whi...
Katherine Gillen et al., "The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en la Frontera" (ACMRS, 2023)
30 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
First performed in the Milagro Theater of Portland, Oregon in 2014, Olga Sanchez Saltveit’s ¡O Romeo! imagines William Shakespeare, late in his l...
Annie Zaleski, "Lady Gaga: Applause" (Palazzo Editions, 2022)
30 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As one of the world's best-selling musicians, Lady Gaga has set the musical bar high. Since her debut album, The Fame (2008), she has sold more than...
Craig Leonard, "Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse" (MIT Press, 2022)
29 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse (MIT Press, 2022), Craig Leonard argues for the contemporary relevance of the aesthetic theory of Herber...
David Shulman and Heike Oberlin, "Two Masterpieces of Kuttiyattam: Mantrankam and Anguliyankam" (Oxford UP, 2019)
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kūṭiyāṭṭam, India’s only living traditional Sanskrit theatre, has been continually performed in Kerala for at least a thousand years. Davi...
Will York, "Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age" (Headpress, 2023)
25 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age (Headpress, 2023), Will York draws on over 100 interviews with musicians...
Shakespeare's "As You Like It" Part 3: the Language
24 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved romantic comedies. It is also his most daring exploration of sex, gender, and identity. In the F...
Shakespeare's "As You Like It" Part 3: the Language
24 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved romantic comedies. It is also his most daring exploration of sex, gender, and identity. In the F...
Rachel Anne Gillett, "At Home in Our Sounds: Music, Race, and Cultural Politics in Interwar Paris" (Oxford UP, 2021)
22 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel Gillett's At Home in Our Sounds: Music, Race, and Cultural Politics in Interwar Paris (Oxford University Press, 2021) explores the world of ...
Catherine Grant, "A Time of One's Own: Histories of Feminism in Contemporary Art" (Duke UP, 2022)
22 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In A Time of One's Own: Histories of Feminism in Contemporary Art (Duke UP, 2022) Catherine Grant examines how contemporary feminist artists are tur...
Jonathan Gray, "Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste" (NYU Press, 2021)
20 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, our host Sim Gill discusses the book Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste (2021) by Jonathan Gray. You’...
Dwayne Epstein, "Killin' Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen, the Most Iconic WW II Movie of All Time" (Citadel Press, 2023)
18 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An explosive inside look at The Dirty Dozen, the star-studded war film that broke the rules, shocked the critics, thrilled audiences, and became an a...
Shakespeare's "As You Like It" Part 2: Characters and Questions
17 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved romantic comedies. It is also his most daring exploration of sex, gender, and identity. In the F...
Jeremy Richey, "Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol" (Cult Epics, 2022)
13 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A trailblazing figure in film and popular culture, Netherlands native Sylvia Kristel became one of the biggest stars in the world as Emmanuelle in 197...
Tina Post, "Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression" (NYU Press, 2023)
12 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Explores expressionlessness, inscrutability, and emotional withholding in Black cultural production. Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acq...
Natasha Rogoff, "Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
12 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the timing appeared perfect to bring Sesame Street to millions of children living in the fo...
Akiko Takeyama, "Staged Seduction: Selling Dreams in a Tokyo Host Club" (Stanford UP, 2016)
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to Tokyo's Kabuki-chō red-light district, where Professor Akiko Takeyama started her 'affective ethnographic' fieldwork to explore the host ...
Shakespeare's "As You Like It" Part 1: the Story
10 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved romantic comedies. It is also his most daring exploration of sex, gender, and identity. In the F...
Celeste Day Moore, "Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France" (Duke UP, 2021)
10 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Celeste Day Moore is a historian of African American culture, media, and Black internationalism in the twentieth century. Her first book, Soundscapes...
Simon Strange, "Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity and the Development of Punk, Post Punk and New Wave Music" (Intellect, 2023)
08 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk to New Wave (Intellect Publishing, 2022), Simon Strange explores the relationship between art an...
Bettina Judd, "Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
08 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Feeling is not “feelin”. Feelin, in African American Vernacular English, is how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: i...
The Gospel According to Dorothy (with Kathryn Wehr)
06 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1941, Dorothy Sayers, Christian apologist, author of The Mind of the Maker, and even more famous for her Peter Whimsey mystery novels, wrote a cy...
Natilee Harren, "Fluxus Forms: Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
05 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Fluxus Forms: Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network (U Chicago Press, 2020), Natilee Harren captures the magnetic energy of Fluxus activiti...
Frenchy Lunning, "Cosplay: The Fictional Mode of Existence" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
04 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cosplay, a portmanteau of “costume” and “play,” emerged from geeky Japanese subcultures to become a popular hobby, and even profession, around...
Mauro Resmini, "Italian Political Cinema: Figure of the Long '68" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
04 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Traditionally, the definition of political cinema assumes a relationship between cinema and politics. In contrast to this view, author Mauro Resmini s...
Shakespeare's "Macbeth" Part 3: the Language
03 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most concentrated and thrilling tragedies. Macbeth is a warrior lord living in medieval Scotland who starts the play...
Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon, "After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
31 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon's edited volume After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge UP, 2022) demon...
Suzanne Ferriss, "Lost in Translation" (British Film Institute, 2023)
31 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) brings two Americans together in Tokyo, each experiencing a personal crisis. In this close look at Coppol...
Ethan Warren, "The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha" (Columbia UP, 2023)
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Thomas Anderson’s evolution from a brash, self-anointed “Indiewood” auteur to one of his generation’s most distinctive voices has been on...
Christina Rice, "Mean...Moody...Magnificent!: Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend" (UP of Kentucky, 2021)
28 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
By the early 1950s, Jane Russell (1921–2011) should have been forgotten. Her career was launched on what is arguably the most notorious advertising ...
Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd, "Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South" (U Georgia Press, 2022)
27 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd's book Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South (U Georgia Press, 2022) explains a curiosity: why a fem...
Shakespeare's "Macbeth" Part 2: Characters and Questions
27 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most concentrated and thrilling tragedies. Macbeth is a warrior lord living in medieval Scotland who starts the play...
Sarah L. Kaufman, "The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life" (Norton, 2015)
23 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Sarah L Kaufman about her book The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life (Norton, 2016). Grace as a word comes from Greek, co...
Rose Marshack, "Play Like a Man: My Life in Poster Children" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
20 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Play Like a Man: My Life in Poster Children (University of Illinois Press, 2023), Poster Children bassist Rose Marshack details her life in the ...
Shakespeare's "Macbeth" Part 1: the Story
20 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most concentrated and thrilling tragedies. Macbeth is a warrior lord living in medieval Scotland who starts the play...
Nicholas Brown, "Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2019)
19 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2019), Nicholas Brown offers a fresh perspective on aesthetic au...
The Sharing of Sound Art
18 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, Claire MacDonald and Sarah Parry discuss the history of recording, the sharing of sound art between artists, how recording has shaped...
Rick de Villiers, "Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Humility and humiliation have an awkward, often unacknowledged intimacy. Humility may be a queenly, cardinal or monkish virtue, while humiliation poin...
Hugh Hodges, "The Fascist Groove Thing: A History of Thatcher's Britain in 21 Mixtapes" (PM Press, 2023)
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is the late 1970s and '80s as explained through the urgent and still-relevant songs of the Clash, the Specials, the Au Pairs, the Style Council, ...
Laura Kolb, "Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare" (Oxford UP, 2021)
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2021), Laura Kolb examines how Shakespeare and his contemporaries represen...
The Wooden O and the Iron Throne: Game of Thrones and Shakespeare Part 3
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dive into the question of why audiences love Shakespeare’s plays and Game of Thrones so much, despite their depictions of prejudice and violence, an...
Kelsey Klotz, "Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness" (Oxford UP, 2023)
12 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How can we—jazz fans, musicians, writers, and historians—understand the legacy and impact of a musician like Dave Brubeck? It is undeniable that B...
Brian Harker, "Sportin' Life: John W. Bubbles, an American Classic" (Oxford UP, 2022)
11 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John W. Bubbles was an actor, singer, comedian, and most importantly, a dancer. Born in 1902, Bubbles was an innovator in the jazz tap style and half ...
Joey Merlo, "On Set with Theda Bara" (1080 Press, 2023)
11 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Joey Merlo's On Set With Theda Bara is a one-person four-character play about the nearly-forgotten silent film "vamp" Theda Bara, but also about fan...
Jessica Rosenberg, "Botanical Poetics: Early Modern Plant Books and the Husbandry of Print" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
10 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Jessica Rosenberg, who is the author of a new book titled Botanical Poetics: Early Modern Plant Books and the Husbandry of Print ...
Lillian Colon, "Lilly: The First Latina Rockette" (Lilly Enterprises, 2021)
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lilly: The First Latina Rockette (Lilly Enterprises, 2021) is the improbable story of a Puerto Rican toddler, confined by her father for 15 years to ...
Ryan Donovan, "Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity" (Oxford UP, 2023)
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Broadway has body issues. What is a Broadway Body? Broadway has long preserved the ideology of the "Broadway Body": the hyper-fit, exceptionally able,...
The Wooden O and the Iron Throne: Game of Thrones and Shakespeare Part 2
06 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Explore the moral tensions and dilemmas that Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin force their audiences to confront, especially in the storylines of the...
Measure for Measure Episode 4: Movies
05 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We’d rate today’s episode a ten out of ten, five star, certified fresh, two thumbs up. But we can’t speak for its IMdB score. This episode was p...
Error, Ego, Humility and Music: A Discussion with Tony Monaco
05 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For today’s episode we welcome jazz organist Tony Monaco to the show. Tony is a master of the Hammond B3 and has collaborated with many other grea...
Girish Shambu, "The New Cinephilia" (Caboose, 2022)
04 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cinephilia has recently experienced a powerful resurgence, one enabled by new media technologies of the digital revolution. One strong continuity betw...
Margaret Hall, "Gemignani: Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond" (Applause Books, 2022)
01 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Margaret Hall's Gemignani: Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond (Applause Books, 2022) is the definitive book on Broadway's greatest music dir...
Frances Howard, "Global Perspectives on Youth Arts Programs: How and Why the Arts Can Make a Difference" (Policy Press, 2022)
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How can the arts make the world a better place? In Global Perspectives on Youth Arts Programs: How and Why the Arts Can Make a Difference (Policy Pr...
Lara Gabrielle, "Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies" (U California Press, 2022)
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From Marion Davies's humble days in Brooklyn to her rise to fame alongside press baron William Randolph Hearst, the public life story of the film star...
The Wooden O and the Iron Throne: Game of Thrones and Shakespeare Part 1
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Discover the real-life history that inspired Game of Thrones and Shakespeare’s history plays, and learn the distinctive ways in which Shakespeare an...
Dan DiPiero, "Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (U Michigan Press, 2022) offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it ...
Jen B. Larson, "Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983" (Feral House, 2022)
26 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 (Feral House, 2023), Jen B. Larson takes readers throughout the United States on a punk history l...
Alexandra Chiriac, "Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest" (de Gruyter, 2022)
25 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alexandra Chiriac's book Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest (de Gruyter, 2022) examines the reach of modernism in design and pe...
Shakespeare's "Hamlet" Part 3: the Language
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet contains some of the most famous words, images, and characters in all of literature. In this course, you’ll learn Ham...
Leila Jancovich and David Stevenson, "Failures in Cultural Participation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the past two decades, the arts and cultural establishment in the UK has been trying to engage a broader set of audiences in their work. Countless ...
Ying Zhu, "Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market" (New Press, 2022)
18 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ ...
Nic Brown, "Bang Bang Crash: A Memoir" (Counterpoint, 2023)
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In his memoir, Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint, 2023), Nic Brown shares his experiences as a rock and roll drummer who abandons his successful musi...
Maya Phillips, "Nerd: Adventures in Fandom from This Universe to the Multiverse" (Atria Books, 2022)
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Maya Phillips first saw the opening of Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, she knew her life would change forever. She then spent her ...
Shakespeare's "Hamlet" Part 2: Characters and Questions
13 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet contains some of the most famous words, images, and characters in all of literature. In this course, you’ll learn Ham...
Jane Hwang Degenhardt, "Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage" (Oxford UP, 2022)
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How were understandings of chance, luck, and fortune affected by early capitalist developments such as the global expansion of English trade and colon...
Natasha Lance Rogoff, "Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the early 1990s, and the USSR is no more. An intrepid young American TV producer has been given a seemingly foolhardy task: bringing the belov...
Steven Hyden, "Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation" (Hachette Books, 2022)
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since Pearl Jam first blasted onto the Seattle grunge scene three decades ago with their debut album, Ten, they have sold 85M+ albums, performed...
J. W. Rinzler and Lee Unkrich, "Stanley Kubrick's The Shining" (Taschen, 2023)
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1966 Stanley Kubrick told a friend that he wanted to make “the world’s scariest movie.” A decade later Stephen King’s The Shining landed on...
Shakespeare's "Hamlet" Part 1: the Story
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet contains some of the most famous words, images, and characters in all of literature. In this course, you’ll learn Ham...
Tim Harte, "Faster, Higher, Stronger, Comrades!: Sports, Art, and Ideology in Late Russian and Early Soviet Culture" (U Wisconsin Press, 2020)
05 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Tim Harte's Faster, Higher, Stronger, Comrades!: Sports, Art, and Ideology in Late Russian and Early Soviet Culture (U Wisconsin Press, 2020) lo...
Deep Cuts: Classic Rock and Hair Metal with Professor and Guitarist Jesse Kavadlo
05 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jesse Kavadlo is the classic “renaissance man” – literature and humanities professor, author of acclaimed books and articles, President of the ...
Shakespeare's Life, World and Works 5: How to Read Shakespeare
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare, who lived in England from 1564 to 1616, is one of the world’s most popular and most captivating authors. Even four hundred year...
Maria Sonevytsky, "Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine" (Wesleyan UP, 2019)
28 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine (Wesleyan UP, 2019), Maria Sonevytsky tracks vernacular Ukrainian discourses of “wildness” as th...
Anthony Reed, "Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production" (Duke UP, 2020)
28 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production (Duke UP, 2020), Anthony Reed argues that studying sound requires conceiving it as process and ...
Shailaja Paik, "The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India" (Stanford UP, 2022)
28 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford UP, 2022) offers the first social and intellectual history of Dali...
Eric Adler, "The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today" (Oxford UP, 2020)
25 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
These are troubling days for the humanities. In response, a recent proliferation of works defending the humanities has emerged. But, taken together, w...
Stealing the Canon: Who Should Be In and Who Should Be Out?
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Literary canons have come under fire for perpetuating privilege and exclusion. But some artists — including William Shakespeare and Hamilton’s Lin...
Rens Bod, "A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present" (Oxford UP, 2014)
23 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many histories of science have been written, but A New History of the Humanities (Oxford UP, 2014) offers the first overarching history of the human...
Shakespeare's Life, World and Works 4: Shakespeare’s Work
23 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare, who lived in England from 1564 to 1616, is one of the world’s most popular and most captivating authors. Even four hundred year...
Dick Weissman, "Bob Dylan's New York: A Historic Guide" (SUNY Press, 2022)
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
New York has long been a city where people go to reinvent themselves. And since the dawn of the twentieth century, New York City’s Greenwich Village...
Drew Morton, "After Midnight: Watchmen After Watchmen" (U Mississippi Press, 2022)
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen fundamentally altered the perception of American comic books and remains one of the medium’s greatest...
Richard Aquila, "Rock & Roll in Kennedy's America: A Cultural History of the Early 1960s" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1960s, the nation was on track to fulfill its destiny in what was being called the American Century. Baby boomers and rock & roll shared ...
Shakespeare's Life, World and Works 3: Shakespeare’s Life
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare, who lived in England from 1564 to 1616, is one of the world’s most popular and most captivating authors. Even four hundred year...
Lisa Biggs, "The Healing Stage: Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation" (Ohio State UP, 2022)
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last five decades, Black women have been one of the fastest-growing segments of the global prison population, thanks to changes in policies t...
Dana Mills, "Dance and Activism: A Century of Radical Dance Across the World" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dance and Activism: A Century of Radical Dance Across the World (Bloomsbury, 2022) by Dana Mills looks at the intersection of dance and radical poli...
Oana Serban, "After Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions" (de Gruyter, 2022)
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions revolutionized the way philosophers and historians of science thought about science, scienti...
Shakespeare's Life, World and Works 2: Shakespeare’s World
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare, who lived in England from 1564 to 1616, is one of the world’s most popular and most captivating authors. Even four hundred year...
Rousseau's Ideas About Censorship in the Arts
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1982, the Institute held a multi day discussion of censorship. In this session from the Vault, sociologist Richard Sennett talks about Jean Jacques...
Albert Glinsky, "Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2022)
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Moog synthesizer ‘bent the course of music forever’ Rolling Stone declared. Bob Moog, the man who did that bending, was a lovable geek with Ei...
Jason Isralowitz, "Nothing to Fear: Alfred Hitchcock and the Wrong Men" (Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2023)
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1956, Alfred Hitchcock focused his lens on an issue that cuts to the heart of our criminal justice system: the risk of wrongful conviction. The res...
Siv B. Lie, "Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France (U Chicago Press, 2021) shows how relationships between racial identi...
Rebecca Binns, "Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avant-Garde" (Manchester UP, 2022)
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Binn's Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avante Garde (Manchester University Press, 2022) is the first book-length work dedicated ...
Shakespeare's Life, World and Works 1: Why Read Shakespeare
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare, who lived in England from 1564 to 1616, is one of the world’s most popular and most captivating authors. Even four hundred year...
Bonus Episode: "Nomadland"
01 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A special bonus episode in honor of the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, 2021! One of the most-nominated films at this year's Oscars is "Nomadland," a...
Aaron Moulton, "The Influencing Machine" (Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, 2022)
31 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1990s, a network of twenty Soros Centres for Contemporary Art sprung up across Eastern Europe: Almaty, Belgrade, Budapest, Kiev, Ljubljana, Pra...
Catholic Movies, Part 1: "Silence" and "The Scarlet and the Black"
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Fessenden and I talk about two movies, Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016) and Jerry London’s The Scarlet and the Black (1983) and what ...
"Gone with the Wind" Revisited
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this week’s episode from the Institute’s Vault, Molly Haskell talks about her 2009 book, Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited, pub...
Stuart Klawans, "Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges" (Columbia UP, 2023)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948--The Gr...
Eve Golden, "Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn't Help It" (UP of Kentucky, 2021)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967) was driven not just to be an actress but to be a star. One of the most influential sex symbols of her time, she was known ...