New Books Network
Film
Asian Review of Books February 25, 2021

Bombay Hustle

Making Movies in a Colonial City

Debashree Mukherjee

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
In 1935, the writer Baburao Patel writes the following about Bombay’s film industry: “In India, with financing conditions still precarious, the professional film distributor thrives. . . . He comes …

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American West February 24, 2021

Cinematic Settlers

The Settler Colonial World in Film

Janne Lahti and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The medium of cinema emerged during the height of Victorian-era European empires, and as a result, settler colonial imperialism has thematically suffused film for well over a century. In Cinematic …
Jewish Studies February 23, 2021

How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish

Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are based on …
Film February 22, 2021

The Brothers Mankiewicz

Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics

Sydney Stern

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
Herman J. (1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture’s only …
Italian Studies February 19, 2021

The Photoromance

A Feminist Reading of Popular Culture

Paola Bonifazio

Hosted by Nicoletta Marini-Maio
Paola Bonifazio’s The Photoromance. A Feminist Reading of Popular Culture (MIT Press, 2020) is the first feminist reading of photoromances that examines both its industry and its fandom, arguing for …
Japanese Studies February 5, 2021

The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu

An Elemental Cinema

Linda C. Ehrlich

Hosted by Takeshi Morisato
The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) draws readers into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentaries of award-winning Japanese film director Kore-eda Hirokazu …
Performing Arts February 5, 2021

Afro-Fabulations

The Queer Drama of Black Life

Tavia Nyong'o

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Tavia Nyong’o's Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (NYU Press, 2018), examines a broad range of artists and disciplines, from Adrian Piper to Kara Walker to the meaning of …
Performing Arts January 20, 2021

This Is Not My Memoir

André Gregory and Todd London

Hosted by Andy Boyd
André Gregory's not-memoir This Is Not My Memoir (FSG, 2020) is a fascinating trip through theatre history as seen through the eyes of one of its greatest directors. The André we …
Japanese Studies January 11, 2021

Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro

Histories of the Everyday

Woojeong Joo

Hosted by Takeshi Morisato
One of the most well regarded of non-Western film directors, responsible for acknowledged classics like Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu Yasujiro worked during a period of immense turbulence for Japan and …
Film January 11, 2021

Little Lindy Is Kidnapped

How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century

Thomas Doherty

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
In Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century (Columbia University Press, 2020), Thomas Doherty offers a lively and comprehensive cultural history of the media coverage of the …
Film January 8, 2021

Truth and Consequences

Game Shows in Fiction and Film

Mike Miley

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
Although nearly every other television form or genre has undergone a massive critical and popular reassessment or resurgence in the past twenty years, the game show’s reputation has remained both …
Popular Culture January 6, 2021

Laura's Ghost

Women Speak about Twin Peaks

Courtenay Stallings

Hosted by Miranda Corcoran
In this episode Miranda Corcoran speaks to Courtenay Stallings about her new book, Laura’s Ghost: Women Speak about Twin Peaks (Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2020). Laura’s Ghost is unique exploration of an iconic …
Film December 29, 2020

American Blockbuster

Movies, Technology, and Wonder

Charles R. Acland

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
Ben-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017): the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster: Movies, Technology, and Wonder (Duke …
Psychoanalysis December 28, 2020

Psychoanalysis and Hidden Narrative in Film

Reading the Symptom

Trevor C. Pederson

Hosted by Christopher Russell
Psychoanalysis and Hidden Narrative in Film: Reading the Symptom (Routledge, 2018) proposes a way of constructing hidden psychological narratives of popular film and novels. Instead of offering interpretations of classic …
Film December 22, 2020

The Camera Lies

Acting for Hitchcock

Dan Callahan

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
In The Camera Lies, published in 2020 by Oxford University Press, author Dan Callahan spotlights the many nuances of Hitchcock's direction throughout his career, from Cary Grant in Notorious (1946) …
Film December 15, 2020

Arab Americans in Film

From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation

Waleed F. Mahdi

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
It comes as little surprise that Hollywood films have traditionally stereotyped Arab Americans, but how are Arab Americans portrayed in Arab films, and just as importantly, how are they portrayed …
Popular Culture December 2, 2020

Monstrous Women in Comics

Samantha Langsdale and Elizabeth Rae Coody

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan
In their new collection, Monstrous Women in Comics (University Press of Mississippi, 2020), Samantha Langsdale and Elizabeth Rae Coody put together a critical volume on the ways women are made monstrous in …
Critical Theory November 30, 2020

The Empire Strikes Back

BFI Classics Series

Rebecca Harrison

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
Why does The Empire Strikes Back matter? In BFI Classics Series's The Empire Strikes Back (Bloomsbury, 2020), Rebecca Harrison, a lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, tells the …
Popular Culture November 25, 2020

Batman and the Joker

Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture

Chris Richardson

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan
In Batman and The Joker: Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2020), Chris Richardson presents a cultural analysis of the ways gender, identity, and sexuality are negotiated in the rivalry …
Native American Studies November 20, 2020

Picturing Indians

Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960

Liza Black

Hosted by Annabel LaBrecque
Behind the braided wigs, buckskins, and excess bronzer that typified the mid-century "filmic Indian" lies a far richer, deeper history of Indigenous labor, survival, and agency. This history takes center …