New Books in Performing Arts
Episodes
What Makes a Book, Song or Movie Popular? A Conversation with Noah Askin
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this conversation (one of my favorite interviews ever), I talk with Noah Askin of the University of California at Irvine about why some popular chi...
Pamela Karimi, "Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice" (Stanford UP, 2022)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alternative Iran offers a unique contribution to the field of contemporary art, investigating how Iranian artists engage with space and site amid the ...
Rumya Sree Putcha, "The Dancer's Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India" (Duke UP, 2022)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Dancer's Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India (Duke UP, 2022) Rumya Sree Putcha theorizes how the Indian classical dancer ...
Craig Seymour, "Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross" (2017)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On April 16, 2003, Luther Vandross suffered a near-fatal stroke, and the world held its breath. Inside sources said he might never sing again. He was ...
Noémie Ndiaye, "Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022) shows how the early modern mass media of ...
Kathe Geist, "Ozu: A Closer Look" (Hong Kong UP, 2022)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Based on a close reading of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu’s extant films, this book provides insights into the ways the director created narrative ...
On Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Paris in 1953, one of the strangest and most popular plays of the 20th century premiered, Waiting for Godot, written by the Irish writer Samuel Bec...
On William Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern charact...
Fearghus Roulston, "Belfast Punk and the Troubles: an Oral History" (Manchester UP, 2022)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Belfast Punk and the Troubles: an Oral History (Manchester UP, 2022) is an oral history of Belfast’s punk scene from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s t...
Chokepoint Capitalism: How Chokepoint Capitalism is Strangling Creative Industries
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many of the creative industries look like an hourglass. On the one side, you have creators; on the other, the rest of us. In the middle, Rebecca Gibli...
Neil Baldwin, "Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern" (Knopf, 2022)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Time magazine called her "the Dancer of the Century." Her technique, used by dance companies throughout the world, became the first long-lasting alte...
Sean Metzger, "The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization" (Indiana UP, 2020)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization (Indiana University Press, 2020), Sean Metzger proposes a new analytical f...
Nicholas de Villiers, "Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy: Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-Liang" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A critical figure in queer Sinophone cinema—and the first director ever commissioned to create a film for the permanent collection of the Louvre—T...
Mrinal Pande, "Popular Hinduism, Stories and Mobile Performances: The Voice of Morari Bapu in Multiple Media" (Routledge, 2022)
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This book addresses the recent transformations of popular Hinduism by focusing upon the religious cum artistic practice of Ramkatha, staged narrative...
Natasha Lasky, "Britney Spears's Blackout" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Britney Spears barely survived 2007. She divorced her husband, lost custody of her kids, went to rehab, shaved her head and assaulted a paparazzo. In ...
Jake S. Friedman, "The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation's Golden Age" (Chicago Review Press, 2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Soon after the birth of Mickey Mouse, one animator raised the Disney Studio far beyond Walt’s expectations. That animator also led a union war that ...
Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode I got to chat about two of my favorite things: the history of imperialism and Star Wars with Daniel Immerwahr, Professor of History ...
Mary Channen Caldwell, "Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Channen Caldwell in her new book Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song (Cambridge University Press 2022) opens up new avenues for invest...
Madeline Lane-McKinley, "Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times" (Common Notions, 2022)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing ...
Jennifer Eun-Jung Row, "Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In a pathbreaking new book, today’s guest, Jennifer Eun-Jung Row, asks how delay and haste in early modern French theater subverts the temporality o...
Kathryn Dickason, "Ringleaders of Redemption: How Medieval Dance Became Sacred" (Oxford UP, 2021)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In popular thought, Christianity is often figured as being opposed to dance. Conventional scholarship traces this controversy back to the Middle Ages....
Stephen Galloway, "Truly, Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century" (Grand Central, 2022)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A sweeping and heartbreaking Hollywood biography about the passionate, turbulent marriage of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. In 1934, a friend brou...
Joseph McBride, "Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge" (Columbia UP, 2021)
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The director and cowriter of some of the world's most iconic films―including Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment―B...
Burt Kearns, "Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood's Real-Life Tough Guy" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In his latest book, Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood's Real-Life Tough Guy (The University of Kentucky Press, 2022) Burt Kearns explores the life of act...
Elliott H. Powell, "Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From Beyoncé's South Asian music-inspired Super Bowl Halftime performance, to jazz artists like John and Alice Coltrane's use of Indian song structur...
Jon Lewis, "The Godfather, Part II" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather, Part II" (1974) is a magisterial cinematic work, a gorgeous, stylized, auteur epic, and one of the few sequels ...
Gregor Gall, "The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer: Radicalism, Resistance and Rebellion" (Manchester UP, 2022)
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Joe Strummer was one of the twentieth century's iconic rock'n'roll rebels. As frontperson, spokesperson and chief lyricist for The Clash, he played a ...
Bradley Morgan, "U2's the Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America" (Backbeat Books, 2021)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat, 2021) Bradley Morgan examines U2's iconic album and their critique of America ...
Kedar Arun Kulkarni, "World Literature and the Question of Genre in Colonial India: Poetry, Drama, and Print Culture 1790-1890" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1818, the East India Company defeated the Maratha confederacy, acquiring vast domains in central and western India. Through coercion if not outrigh...
Meredith Schweig, "Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Like many states emerging from oppressive political rule, Taiwan saw a cultural explosion in the late 1980s, when nearly four decades of martial law u...
Rustom Bharucha, "The Second Wave: Reflections on the Pandemic Through Photography, Performance, and Public Culture" (Seagull Books, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lessons in resilience in the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India. Focusing on the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India between Apri...
Andrew Fiss, "Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom (Rutgers University Press, 2020) by Dr. Andrew Fiss tel...
Natasha Lance Rogoff, "Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
09 Nov 2022
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 ...
Bruce Davis, "The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" (Brandeis UP, 2022)
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Written by the former executive director of the Academy, this is the first behind-the-scenes history of the organization behind the Academy Awards. ...
Guthrie P. Ramsey, "Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present" (U California Press, 2022)
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., is an award-winning musicologist, music historian, composer, and pianist whose prescient theoretical and critical intervention...
Shaken and Stirred
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We couldn’t do a season on the Cold War without talking about Bond . . . James Bond. He was there from the beginning and has of course survived into...
Laura A. Frahm, "Design in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus" (MIT Press, 2022)
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Design in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus (MIT Press, 2022) provides the first comprehensive history of film experiments at the Bauhaus, the...
Ross Cole, "The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination" (U California Press, 2021)
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination (U California Press, 2021), Ross Cole revisits the remarkable upswell of interest in f...
Joseph McBride, "The Whole Durn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers" (Anthem Press, 2022)
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Coen Bros. have attracted a wide following and have been rewarded with Oscars and other honors. Some of their films such as Fargo, The Big Lebowsk...
Mallory Lewis and Nat Segaloff, "Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team That Changed Children's TV" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Two decades after Lewis and Lamb Chop last graced television with their presence, Lewis' daughter Mallory and author Nat Segaloff have set the record ...
Shall We Play A Game?
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Remember Khrushchev-Nixon Kitchen Debate? America recognized its consumer culture was a Cold War weapon. By the early 80s, the home computer in the ha...
Kyle Stevens, "The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory" (Oxford UP, 2022)
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Despite changes in the media landscape, film remains a vital force in contemporary culture, as do our ideas of what "a movie" or "the cinematic" are. ...
Proust Questionnaire 37: Dame Zandra Rhodes, Fashion Designer
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dame Zandra Rhodes is an English fashion and textile designer who has designed garments for Diana, Princess of Wales and numerous celebrities such as...
Larisa Kingston Mann, "Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power (UNC Press, 2022)
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, our host Mariela Morales Suárez discusses the book Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of C...
Scott Bukatman, "Black Panther" (U Texas Press, 2022)
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Black Panther was the first Black superhero in mainstream American comics. Black Panther was a cultural phenomenon that broke box office records. Ye...
Wolverines!
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode and the next look back at films that came out in the 1980s, a decade when Hollywood seemed to cater to teenage audiences like never befor...
Diane Negra, "Shadow of a Doubt" (Auteur, 2021)
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Diane Negra about Shadow of a Doubt (Auteur, 2021). Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was British-born Alfred Hitchcock's fifth American f...
John F. Lyons, "Joy and Fear: The Beatles, Chicago and the 1960s" (Permuted Press, 2020)
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For many, the Beatles offered a delightful alternative to the dull and the staid, while for others, the mop-top haircuts, the unsettling music, and th...
Alexander Sergeant, "Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema" (SUNY Press, 2021)
14 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hollywood fantasy cinema is responsible for some of the most lucrative franchises produced over the past two decades, yet it remains difficult to find...
Charles Sawyer, "B. B. King: From Indianola to Icon: A Personal Odyssey with the 'King of the Blues'" (Schiffer Publishing, 2022)
14 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Want to take a trip with the king of the Blues? As B.B. King’s photographer and original biographer, Charlie Sawyer was along for the ride. In B.B....
Ramzi Fawaz, "Queer Forms" (NYU Press, 2022)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ramzi Fawaz, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a new book that weaves together the more contemporary history of feminis...
Bruce Robbins, "Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction" (Stanford UP, 2022)
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is criticism for? Over the past few decades, violent disagreements over that question in the academy have burst into the news media. These confli...
On Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House"
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Watching our favorite TV shows and movies today, it’s easy to take the relatable characters and familiar settings for granted. But when Henrik Ibsen...
Asha Rogers, "State Sponsored Literature: Britain and Cultural Diversity After 1945" (Oxford UP, 2020)
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How does the state support writers? In State Sponsored Literature: Britain and Cultural Diversity after 1945 (Oxford UP, 2020), Asha Rogers, Senio...
Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise" (Routledge, 2022)
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise (Routledge, 2022) examines the multiplicity of books, films, TV shows, and merchandise that make ...
The Two Russias
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1980s, Hollywood reflected the real world thaw in the Cold War by depicting the idea of two Russias: the cold bureaucratic state run by gr...
Cinema’s First Nasty Women
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it ...
Sarah F. Derbew, "Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Derbew’s new book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2022) asks how should articulations of blackness from the fifth ce...
Usha Iyer, "Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema" (Oxford UP, 2020)
30 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema (Oxford UP, 2020), an ambitious study of two of South Asia's most popular cultural...
Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Breathing Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press (2022), Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk...
Samhita Sunya, "Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay" (U California Press, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. In this inaugural episode, our host Aswin Punathambekar speaks with Samhita Sun...
Cold War Homefront
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We could do a whole season on Vietnam war films, but in this episode we chose three films that highlight the Cold War’s omnipresence in daily life. ...
Gregory Sholette, "The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art" (Lund Humphries, 2021)
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Since the global financial crash of 2008, artists have become increasingly engaged in a wide range of cultural activism targeted against capitalism, p...
Kathryn Harkup, "Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions – shock, sadness, ...
Annie-B Parson, "The Choreography of Everyday Life" (Verso, 2022)
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Renowned choreographer Annie-B Parson's new book The Choreography of Everyday Life (Verso, 2022) is many things: a pandemic diary, a discourse of Gr...
Minou Arjomand, "Staged: Show Trials, Political Theater, and the Aesthetics of Judgment" (Columbia UP, 2020)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Staged: Show Trials, Political Theater, and the Aesthetics of Judgment (Columbia University Press, 2020), Minou Arjomand provides a startling accou...
Jon Krampner, "Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A Hollywood screenwriting and movie-making icon, Ernest Lehman penned some of the most memorable scenes to ever grace the silver screen. Hailed by Va...
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last episode we discussed films about how a nuclear war would start, particularly the insane logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In this epis...
Stevie Van Zandt, "Unrequited Infatuations: A Memoir" (Hachette Books, 2022)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What story begins in a bedroom in suburban New Jersey in the early '60s, unfolds on some of the country's largest stages, and then ranges across the g...
Steve Adelman, "Nocturnal Admissions: A Nightlife Memoir" (Santa Monica Press, 2022)
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Nocturnal Admissions: Behind the Scenes at Tunnel, Limelight, Avalon, and Other Legendary Nightclubs (Santa Monica Press, 2022), nightclub direc...
Christin Essin, "Working Backstage: A Cultural History and Ethnography of Technical Theater Labor" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Working Backstage: A Cultural History and Ethnography of Technical Theater Labor (University of Michigan Press, 2021) by Dr. Christin Essin illuminat...
A MAD, MAD, World
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The world lived under the shadow of the acronym MAD for forty years. Mutually Assured Destruction was no laughing matter, but Stanley Kubrick thought ...
Pamela N. Corey, "The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia" (U Washington Press, 2021)
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia (U Washington Press, 2021), Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of unde...
Danielle J. Lindemann, "True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us" (FSG, 2022)
12 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is reality TV important? In True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us (FSG, 2022), Danielle J. Lindemann, an Associate Professor of Sociology ...
Nicholas Gamso, "Art After Liberalism" (Columbia UP, 2022)
12 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that co...
Barry Houlihan, "Theatre and Archival Memory: Irish Drama and Marginalised Histories 1951-1977" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021)
09 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing on newly released and digitized archival records, Houlihan’s Theatre and Archival Memory: Irish Drama and Marginalised Histories 1951-1977 ...
Marissa R. Moss, "Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be" (Henry Holt, 2022)
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It was only two decades ago, but, for the women of country music, 1999 seems like an entirely different universe. With Shania Twain, country's biggest...
Who Can You Trust?
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Can you imagine living in a society that is ostensibly a democracy but secret forces are working behind the scenes to manipulate events? What if our i...
Karinne Keithley Syers, "Astrs" (53rd State Press, 2022)
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Karinne Keithley Syers is the founding editor of 53rd State Press, and Astrs is the play that inspired that long-running experiment in publishing av...
Adam Abraham, "Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors (Bloomsbury, 2022), Adam Abraham chronicles the history of this hit ...
88 Underwater Eye: Margaret Cohen explores the Film Aquatic
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Margaret Cohen joins John to discuss The Underwater Eye, which explores "How the Movie Camera Opened the Depths and Unleashed New Realms of Fantasy....
Aniket De, "The Boundary of Laughter: Popular Performances Across Borders in South Asia" (Oxford UP, 2022)
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Combining archival research with ethnographic fieldwork, Aniket De's book The Boundary of Laughter: Popular Performances Across Borders in South Asia...
He May Be a Communist!
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are back for a third season! The Russian invasion of Ukraine reminded us all that “everything old is new again” and that includes Cold War tens...
Matti Friedman, "Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai" (Spiegel & Grau, 2022)
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen—thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end—traveled from his home on t...
Emily Michelson, "Catholic Spectacle and Rome's Jews: Early Modern Conversion and Resistance" (Princeton UP, 2022)
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Starting in the sixteenth century, Jews in Rome were forced, every Saturday, to attend a hostile sermon aimed at their conversion. Harshly policed, th...
Julie A. Turnock, "The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism" (U Texas Press, 2022)
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma...
Brahma Prakash, "Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the 'Folk Performance' in India" (Oxford UP, 2019)
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Folk performances reflect the life-worlds of a vast section of subaltern communities in India. What is the philosophy that drives these performances, ...
Ruben Espinosa, "Shakespeare on the Shades of Racism" (Routledge, 2021)
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Shakespeare on the Shades of Racism (Routledge, 2021), Ruben Espinosa explores the works of the early modern dramatist in the context of Trump-er...
Michael Sidney Fosberg, "Nobody Wants to Talk about It: Race, Identity, and the Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations" (Incognito, 2020)
25 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Nobody Wants to Talk About It: Race, Identity, and the Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations (Incognito, 2020), Michael Sidney Fosber...
Karen Archey, "After Institutions" (Les presses du réel, 2022)
22 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Faced with waning state support, declining revenue, and forced entrepreneurialism, museums have become a threatened public space. Simultaneously, they...
Antonio C. Cuyler, "Access, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of Executive Opera Managers of Color in the US" (Routledge, 2020)
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Where are the success stories for people of color in opera? In Access, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the ...
87* Mike Leigh In Focus (JP)
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In nearly 50 years of filmmaking, British director Mike Leigh has ranged from comic portrayals of ordinary life amid the social breakdowns of Thatch...
Julius B. Fleming Jr., "Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation" (NYU Press, 2022)
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Freedom, Now!” This rallying cry became the most iconic phrase of the Civil Rights Movement, challenging the persistent command that Black people...
Christopher M. Reali, "Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Roll...
Sara Farrington, "The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde" (53rd State Press, 2021)
10 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sara Farrington's The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde (53rd State Press, 2021) is a collection of interviews with a host ...
Nick Davis, "Competing with Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a Dual Portrait" (Knopf, 2021)
10 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A fascinating, complex dual biography of Hollywood's most dazzling—and famous—brothers, and a dark, riveting portrait of competition, love, and en...
M. I. Franklin, "Sampling Politics: Music and the Geocultural" (Oxford UP, 2021)
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Music sampling has become a predominantly digitalized practice. It was popularized with the rise of Rap and Hip-Hop, as well as ambient music scenes, ...
Grant Wiedenfeld, "Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream" (Oxford UP, 2022)
08 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seve...
86 Dana Stevens on Buster Keaton (JP EF)
04 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dana Stevens joins Elizabeth and John to discuss Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema and the Invention of the Twentieth Century. Her fanta...
Leah Kardos, "Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie (Bloomsbury, 2022) takes a close look at David Bowie's ambitious last works: his surprise 'comeback' ...