New Books in Performing Arts
Episodes
Alan John Ainsworth, "Sight Readings: Photographers and American Jazz, 1900-1960" (Intellect, 2022)
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alan John Ainsworth's book Sight Readings: Photographers and American Jazz, 1900-1960 (Intellect, 2022) explores the work of a wide range of America...
John M. Shaw, "Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) is an epic history of a little-kno...
Jeff Hayton, "Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany" (Oxford UP, 2022)
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jeff Hayton's book Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany (Oxford UP, 2022) is a cultural history of punk in Germany. The manusc...
Ryan Uytdewilligen, "Killing John Wayne: The Making of the Conqueror" (Lyons Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Behold the history of a film so scandalous, so outrageous, so explosive it disappeared from print for over a quarter century! A film so dangerous, hal...
Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg, "Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image" (MIT Press, 2022)
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg's edited volume Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (MIT Press, 2022) offers intersectional, intergenerational, an...
Katharine A. Burnett and Monica Carol Miller, "The Tacky South" (LSU Press, 2022)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As a way to comment on a person’s style or taste, the word “tacky” has distinctly southern origins, with its roots tracing back to the so-called...
Caryn Rose, "Why Patti Smith Matters" (U of Texas Press, 2022)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Patti Smith arrived in New York City at the end of the Age of Aquarius in search of work and purpose. What she found—what she fostered—was a cultu...
Melanie Bell, "Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Where are the women in the history of British cinema? In Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema (U Illinois Press, 2021), Melanie Bell, a...
Scott Meslow, "From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy" (Day Street, 2022)
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An in-depth celebration of the romantic comedy's modern golden era and its role in our culture, tracking the genre from its heyday in the '80s and the...
Donovan Sherman, "The Philosopher's Toothache: Embodied Stoicism in Early Modern English Drama" (Northwestern UP, 2021)
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing, Leonato says, “I pray thee peace; I will be flesh and blood. / For there was never yet philosophe...
Tony Perman, "Signs of the Spirit: Music and the Experience of Meaning in Ndau Ceremonial Life" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2005, Tony Perman attended a ceremony alongside the living and the dead. His visit to a Zimbabwe farm brought him into contact with the madhlozi,...
Jennifer Lin, "Beethoven in Beijing: Stories from the Philadelphia Orchestra's Historic Journey to China" (Temple UP, 2022)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1973, the Philadelphia Orchestra boarded a Pan Am 707 plane in Philadelphia for a once-in-a-lifetime journey: a multi-city tour of Maoist China, mo...
Alexandra Apolloni, "Freedom Girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop" (Oxford UP, 2021)
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Freedom Girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop (Oxford University Press, 2021) by Alexandra M. Apolloni is about how the vocal performances o...
Alison Macor, "Making The Best Years of Our Lives: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation" (U Texas Press, 2022)
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Released in 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives became an immediate success. Life magazine called it “the first big, good movie of the post-war era”...
Ben Davis, "Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy" (Haymarket Books, 2022)
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It is a scary and disorienting time for art, as it is a scary and disorienting time in general. Aesthetic experience is both overshadowed by the spect...
Yussef El Guindi, "In a Clear Concise Arabic Tongue" (Broadway Play Publishing, 2021)
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Yussef El Guindi's In a Clear Concise Arabic Tongue (Broadway Play Publishing, 2021) collects short plays and monologues from almost twenty years o...
Mattin, "Social Dissonance" (MIT Press, 2022)
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs: historically by political forces, cog...
A. S. Hamrah, "The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018" (N+1 Books, 2018)
04 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018 (N+1 Books, 2018) collects the best of A. S. Hamrah’s film writing for n+1, The Baffler, Bookf...
Christopher Silver, "Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across Twentieth-Century North Africa" (Stanford UP, 2022)
04 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across Twentieth-Century North Africa (Stanford UP, 2022) offers a new history of twentieth-century North...
Paul Dobryden, "The Hygienic Apparatus: Weimar Cinema and Environmental Disorder" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Hygienic Apparatus: Weimar Cinema and Environmental Disorder (Northwestern UP, 2022) traces how the environmental effects of industrialization re...
Jasmina Tumbas, "I Am Jugoslovenka!: Feminist Performance Politics During and After Yugoslav Socialism" (Manchester UP, 2022)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With I Am Jugoslovenka!: Feminist Performance Politics During and After Yugoslav Socialism (Manchester UP, 2022), Jasmina Tumbas examines forms of f...
Katherine E. Sugg, "Apocalypse and Heroism in Popular Culture" (McFarland, 2022)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stories of world-ending catastrophe have featured prominently in film and television lately. Zombie apocalypses, climate disasters, alien invasions, g...
G. Ronald Murphy, "Brecht and the Bible: A Study of Religious Nihilism and Human Weakness in Brecht's Drama of Morality and the City" (UNC Press, 2020)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Brecht and the Bible: A Study of Religious Nihilism and Human Weakness in Brecht's Drama of Morality and the City (UNC Press, 2020), Father G. R...
José Rivera, "Lovesong (Imperfect) (Broadway Play Publishing, 2021)
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
José Rivera's Lovesong (Imperfect) (Broadway Play Publishing, 2021) follows a passionate love triangle in an unusual situation: the US government ...
Alan Lane, "The Club on the Edge of Town: A Pandemic Memoir" (Salamander Street, 2022)
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happened to arts organisations during the pandemic? In The Club on the Edge of Town: A Pandemic Memoir (Salamander Street, 2022), Alan Lane, A...
John Luther Adams, "Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska" (FSG, 2020)
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
John Luther Adams's Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) is a profound, funny, and enlightening memoir from ...
Kira Thurman, "Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms" (Cornell UP, 2021)
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms by Kira Thurman (Cornell University Press, 2021) is a truly interdis...
Justin Gautreau, "The Last Word: The Hollywood Novel and the Studio System" (Oxford UP, 2020)
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Justin Gautreau's book The Last Word: The Hollywood Novel and the Studio System (Oxford UP, 2020) argues that the Hollywood novel opened up space fo...
Brian Kulick, "The Secret Life of Theater: On the Nature and Function of Theatrical Representation" (Routledge, 2019)
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Unlike many books that examine the how of making theater, Brian Kulick's The Secret Life of Theater: On the Nature and Function of Theatrical Repre...
Çigdem Çidam, "In the Street: Democratic Action, Theatricality, and Political Friendship" (Oxford UP, 2021)
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Çigdem Çidam, Associate Professor of Political Science at Union College, has a new book titled In the Street: Democratic Action, Theatricality, and...
Charles Elton, "Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Price of a Vision" (Abrams Press, 2022)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Price of a Vision (Abrams Press, 2022) is the first biography of critically acclaimed then critically...
Stan Lai, "Selected Plays of Stan Lai" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Selected Plays of Stan Lai (U Michigan Press, 2022) collects a cross-section from the four-decade career of one of the major dramatists of our t...
Mark Anthony Neal, "Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive" (NYU Press, 2022)
10 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are living in an era of unprecedented access to popular culture: contemporary digital infrastructure provides anyone with an internet connection ac...
Hentyle Yapp, "Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic" (Duke UP, 2021)
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic (Duke UP, 2021), Hentyle Yapp analyzes contemporary Chinese art as it circulates on the glo...
Trina Nileena Banerjee, "Performing Silence: Women in the Group Theatre Movement in Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2021)
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Trina Nileena Banerjee's book Performing Silence: Women in the Group Theatre Movement in Bengal (Oxford UP, 2021) addresses the absence of a sustain...
Melissa Vosen Callens, "Ode to Gen X: Institutional Cynicism in 'Stranger Things' and 1980s Film" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Ode to Gen X: Institutional Cynicism in "Stranger Things" and 1980s Film (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), Melissa Vosen Callens explores ...
Stan BH Tan-Tangbau et al., "Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội: Improvisations Between Worlds" (Routledge, 2022)
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội: Improvisations between Worlds (Routledge, 2022) examines the germination and growth of jazz under communist rule—perc...
Stephen Deusner, "Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers" (U Texas Press, 2021)
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen Deusner's Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers (U Texas Press, 2021) is the book-length study Drive-B...
Mary Beth Willard, "Why It's Ok to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists" (Routledge, 2021)
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The #metoo movement has forced many fans to consider what they should do when they learn that a beloved artist has acted immorally. One natural though...
Peter C. Zimmerman, "The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight (UP of Mississippi, 2021) is a celebration of jazz and the men and women who created and transformed it...
Dustin Tahmahkera, "Cinematic Comanches: The Lone Ranger in the Media Borderlands" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries Comanches have captivated imaginations. Yet their story in popular accounts abruptly stops in 1875, when the last free Comanches entered...
Lisa Blackmore and Liliana Gómez, "Liquid Ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean Art" (Routledge, 2020)
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, Lisa Blackmore, Senior Lecture in the School of Philosophy, History and Interdisciplinary Studies Center at the University of Essex,...
Rosalind Galt, "Alluring Monsters: The Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization" (Columbia UP, 2021)
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Alluring Monsters: The Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization (Columbia University Press, 2021), film scholar Rosalind Galt offers a cinematic e...
Daniel Fairfax, "The Red Years of Cahiers Du Cinéma (1968-1973)" (Amsterdam UP, 2021)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Com...
Mickle Maher, "Six Plays" (Agate Press, 2022)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
6 Plays (Agate Press, 2022) collects six plays written over a twenty year period by playwright Mickle Maher. Maher is a legend of the Chicago theatr...
James S. Bielo, "Materializing the Bible: Scripture, Sensation, Place" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when the written words of biblical scripture are transformed into experiential, choreographed environments? To answer this question, anth...
Richard Stamz and Patrick A. Roberts, "Give 'em Soul, Richard!: Race, Radio, and Rhythm and Blues in Chicago" (U Illinois Press, 2010)
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Give 'em Soul, Richard!: Race, Radio, and Rhythm and Blues in Chicago (U Illinois Press, 2010) is the remarkable story of a remarkable man. Richard S...
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, "When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today" (Harper, 2021)
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It was the Golden Age of Radio and powerful men were making millions in advertising dollars reaching thousands of listeners every day. When television...
Chris Wade, "The Films of James Woods" (Wisdom Twins Books, 2022)
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
James Woods is one of the most versatile and captivating actors in American film history. From his breakthrough performance as Greg Powell in The Onio...
Mike Errico, "Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter" (Backbeat Book, 2022)
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Mike Errico about his new book Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter (Backbeat Books, 2022). Brain t...
Jami Rogers, "British Black and Asian Shakespeareans, 1966-2018: Integrating Shakespeare" (Arden Shakespeare, 2022)
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is the hidden history of performers of colour in in British theatre? In British Black and Asian Shakespeareans: Integrating Shakespeare, 1966–...
Alejandro Nava, "Street Scriptures: Between God and Hip-Hop" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I speak with Alejandro Nava about his new book, Street Scriptures: Between God and Hip-Hop (U Chicago Press, 2022). This book explores an imp...
Farah Nayeri, "Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age" (Astra Publishing, 2022)
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, art censorship has been a top-down phenomenon—kings, popes, and one-party states decided what was considered obscene, blasphemous, or...
Alice Dailey, "How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol" (Cornell UP, 2022)
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alice Dailey’s How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol (Cornell University Press, 2022)...
Alvin Eng, "Our Laundry, Our Town: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond" (Fordham UP, 2022)
16 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our Laundry, Our Town: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond (Fordham UP, 2022) is a memoir that decodes and proces...
Sandra Johnston, et al., "Actional Poetics-Ash She He: The Performance Actuations of Alastair MacLennan, 1971-2020" (Intellect, 2022)
16 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A retrospective monograph of Alistair MacLennan’s performance art practice, its influence on the Belfast art scene, and its relationships with wider...
Zachary F. Price, "Black Dragon: Afro-Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination" (Ohio State UP, 2021)
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Dragon: Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination (Ohio State UP, 2022), Zachary F. Price illuminates martial arts as a site ...
Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden, "From Servant to Savant: Musical Privilege, Property, and the French Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2022)
11 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s copyright laws are predicated on the idea that music is intellectual property; a commodity that has value to its creator and to its publishe...
Christopher Donoghue, "The Sociology of Bullying: Power, Status, and Aggression Among Adolescents" (NYU Press, 2022)
11 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
School shootings and suicides by young victims of bullying have spurred a proliferation of anti-bullying programs, yet most of the research done on sc...
Guangtian Ha, "The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China" (Columbia UP, 2021)
09 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Jahriyya Sufis—a primarily Sinophone order of Naqshbandiyya Sufism in northwestern China—inhabit a unique religious soundscape. The hallmark o...
J. Lorenzo Perillo, "Choreographing in Color: Filipinos, Hip-Hop, and the Cultural Politics of Euphemism" (Oxford UP, 2020)
06 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Investigating the development of Filipino popular dance and performance since the late 20th century, Choreographing in Color: Filipinos, Hip-Hop, and...
Dhanveer Singh Brar, "Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century" (Goldsmiths Press, 2021)
06 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century (Goldsmiths Press, 2021) uses three Black electronic musics...
Mila Zuo, "Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium" (Duke UP, 2022)
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Yi’s eyes soften as he watches Jiazhi sing a Chinese folk song with subtle, feminine movements in the film, Lust, Caution. The room fills with laug...
Aaron Cohen, "Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Curtis Mayfield. The Chi-Lites. Chaka Khan. Chicago’s place in the history of soul music is rock solid. But for Chicagoans, soul music in its heyda...
Paul Geary, "Experimental Dining: Performance, Experience and Ideology in Contemporary Creative Restaurants" (Intellect Books, 2022)
02 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Paul Geary’s Experimental Dining: Performance, Experience and Ideology in Contemporary Creative Restaurants (Intellect, 2022) examines the wor...
Nancy Barile, "I'm Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises-And-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion" (Bazillion Points, 2021)
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nancy Barile shares her love of hardcore punk in her new memoir, I'm Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises and All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion (Bazil...
Amanda D. Lotz, "Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars" (MIT Press, 2021)
27 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Has the internet really been the main culprit behind the upheaval of the contemporary media industries? In Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannib...
Andy Bragen, "This Is My Office and Notes on My Mother's Decline: Two Plays" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
27 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of New Books in Performing Arts, we talk with Andy Bragen about two plays of his published in a new volume by Northwestern University ...
Rania Karoula, "The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939: Engagement and Experimentation" (Edinburgh UP, 2020)
22 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Rania Karoula's The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) offers a readable and engaging summary of an important ch...
Jared N. Champion and Peter C. Kunze, "Taking a Stand: Contemporary US Stand-Up Comedians As Public Intellectuals" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stand-up comedians have a long history of walking a careful line between serious and playful engagement with social issues: Lenny Bruce questioned the...
Patricia A. Banks, "Black Culture, Inc.: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America" (Stanford UP, 2022)
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why do corporations fund cultural organisations and events? In Black Culture, Inc: How ethnic community support pays for corporate America Patricia ...
Kenneth Partridge, "Hell of a Hat: The Rise of '90s Ska and Swing" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)
15 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the late ’90s, third-wave ska broke across the American alternative music scene like a tsunami. In sweaty clubs across the nation, kids danced th...
Simon Armitage, "A Vertical Art: On Poetry" (Princeton UP, 2022)
15 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In A Vertical Art: On Poetry (Princeton UP, 2022), acclaimed poet Simon Armitage takes a refreshingly common-sense approach to an art form that can ...
Yana Stainova, "Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
13 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
El Sistema is Venezuela's large scale classical music education program for poor and working class people on the economic, social, and physical margi...
Meredith Heller, "Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender-Bending" (Indiana UP, 2020)
13 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing on a rich body of archival and ethnographic research, Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender-Bending (Indian UP, 2020) illumina...
Brandon J. Manning, "Played Out: The Race Man in 21st Century Satire" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
12 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Dr. Brandon J. Manning talks about his most recent book, Played Out: The Race Man in 21st Century Satire (Rutgers UP, 2022). Here's...
David Maroto, "The Artist's Novel: A New Medium" (Mousse, 2020)
11 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For better or worse, artists write. But why would a visual artist write a novel? How should such a novel be experienced? How does the artist’s nove...
Richard Brent Turner, "Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism" (NYU Press, 2021)
08 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In his fascinating and riveting new book Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism (NYU Press, 2021), hist...
Louis K. Epstein, "The Creative Labor of Music Patronage in Interwar France" (Boydell, 2021)
06 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Patronage has long been an important topic of study in musicology, but is much more likely to be one that specialists in medieval or renaissance music...
Lester D. Friedman, "Citizen Spielberg" (U of Illinois Press, 2022)
06 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Steven Spielberg's extraordinary career redefined Hollywood, but his achievement goes far beyond shattered box office records. Rejecting the view of S...
David Hajdu and John Carey, "A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge" (Columbia UP, 2021)
06 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Too often, vaudeville is seen from the perspective of its decline: it is the corny, messy art form that predated the book musical, or that gave us Cha...
Chelsea Phillips, "Carrying All Before Her: Celebrity Pregnancy and the London Stage, 1689-1800" (U of Delaware Press, 2022)
04 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The rise of celebrity stage actresses in the long eighteenth century created a class of women who worked in the public sphere while facing considerabl...
Rebecca Cypess, "Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
01 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today we speak to Rebecca Cypess, Associate Professor at Rutgers University, about her new book: Musical Salons in the Enlightenment (University of ...
Nick Marx, "Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television" (Indiana UP, 2019)
30 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invite...
Michael Spitzer, "The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
30 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we u...
Kate Guthrie, "The Art of Appreciation: Music and Middlebrow Culture in Modern Britain" (U California Press, 2021)
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the BBC Proms to Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, initiatives to promote classical music have been a pervasive feature of twentieth-century m...
Liora Sarfati, "Contemporary Korean Shamanism: From Ritual to Digital" (Indiana UP, 2021)
25 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Once viewed as an embarrassing superstition, the theatrical religious performances of Korean shamans--who communicate with the dead, divine the future...
Robert P. Kolker, "Triumph Over Containment: American Film in the 1950s" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
25 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The long 1950s, which extend back to the early postwar period and forward into the early 1960s, were a period of “containment culture” in America,...
Liz Clarke, "The American Girl Goes to War: Women and National Identity in US Silent Film" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
During the 1910s, films about war often featured a female protagonist. The films portrayed women as spies, cross-dressing soldiers, and athletic defen...
Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, "Collecting Music in the Aran Islands: A Century of History and Practice" (U Wisconsin Press, 2021)
18 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Deirdre Ní Chonghaile is a writer, musician, broadcaster, and curator from the Aran Islands. Working bilingually in Irish and English, she is drawn t...
Lily E. Hirsch, "Weird Al: Seriously" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Funny music is often dismissed as light and irrelevant, but Weird Al Yankovic’s fourteen successful studio albums prove there is more going on than...
Annie Berke, "Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television" (U California Press, 2022)
16 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is the hidden history of women in the television industry? In Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (U California Press...
René V. Arcilla, "Wim Wenders's Road Movie Philosophy: Education Without Learning" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
16 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is education? Most of the time, we have little patience for this question because we take the answer to be obvious: we identify education with sc...
Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon, "Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
14 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at th...
Helene Meyers, "Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
11 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition (Rutgers University Press, 2021) focuses on a rich, usable American Jewish cinematic tradition. This tradition...
Uwe Schütte, "Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany" (Penguin, 2021)
10 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Uwe Schütte's Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany (Penguin, 2021) is not your typical rock star biography. Eschewing gossipy interpersonal details...
Dana Stevens, "Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century" (Simon and Schuster, 2022)
09 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate’...
Larissa FastHorse, "The Thanksgiving Play / What Would Crazy Horse Do?" (Theatre Communications Group, 2021)
09 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Larissa FastHorse's new collection of plays includes the wildly successful plays The Thanksgiving Play/What Would Crazy Horse Do? (Theatre Communica...
Vicki L. Brennan, "Singing Yoruba Christianity: Music, Media, and Morality" (Indiana UP, 2018)
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Singing the same song is a central part of the worship practice for members for the Cherubim and Seraphim Christian Church in Lagos, Nigeria. Vicki L....
Lynn Garafola, "La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern" (Oxford UP, 2022)
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lynn Garafola's La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern (Oxford UP, 2022) is both readable and rigorous, a rare combination. As a historian and emi...