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PODCAST

New Books in Popular Culture

Interviews with Scholars of Popular Culture about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

society & culture

All Episodes

41:06

Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison, "Transatlantic...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/05/04

Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Katie Milestone & Dr. Simon A. Morrison explores the emergence and evolution of nightclubs and electronic dance music from the 1950s onwards. It traces the rhythmic journey of dance music, following the pulse as it bounced between Europe, North America and the Caribbean. Music, dance styles and nightclub spaces are not created in isolation; they are shaped by collective influences and shared experiences. This book uncovers

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55:24

The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 4-6): Too...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/05/03

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we continue our analysis of Andor season 2 with episodes 4-6. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the mirrored political challenges faced by figures from the Empire and the Rebellion. We see a big theme of these episodes as “too much information,” as both sides struggle to distinguish friend from foe, signal from noise, the authentic from the inauthentic. We discuss classic political problems portrayed in the episodes such as collective action

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64:29

Amanda D. Lotz, "After Mass Media: Storytelling for...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/05/02

With significant evolutions in digital technologies and media distribution in the past two decades, the business of storytelling through screens has shifted dramatically. In the past, blockbuster movies and TV shows like Friends aimed first for domestic mass audiences, although the biggest hits circulated globally. Now, transnational distribution plays a primary role and imagined audiences are global. At the same time, the once-mass audience has significantly fragmented to enable an expansion in the

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44:23

Lynn Downey, "American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/30

In American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West (U Oklahoma Press, 2022), historian Lynn Downey offers a cultural history of the dude ranch as a distinctly American invention—one that sits at the crossroads of fantasy and labor, leisure and land, myth and modernity. Instead of treating dude ranches as a kitschy "cowboy for a week" retreat, Downey situates them within the larger history of how the American West has been imagined and sold. Dude ranching reflected the

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55:56

Television, Translation, and Algorithms on Netflix

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/29

How do media producers appeal to international audiences in the streaming era?In this episode of the Global Media & Communication podcast, our host Juan Llamas-Rodriguez interviews Elia Cornelio Marí about her research on Mexican melodramas, Netflix algorithms, and television in translation. In this episode you will hear about: Why melodrama became an important genre in the development of Netflix’s original series across Latin America How translation affects the reception of television

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51:28

The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 1-3): The...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/28

It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we react to Andor Season 2, episodes 1-3. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the motives and aims of the rebellion and the Empire. Both sides have major coordination problems in these episodes, although the causes are very different. We explain and analyze the recurrent problems of authoritarian control and rebellion against it, and the way Andor comments upon them. We see a major theme of these three episodes as “the personal is political,”

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72:55

Ben Arogundade, "Hollywood Blackout: The Battle for...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/27

On February 29, 1940, African American actor Hattie McDaniel became the first person of color, and the first Black woman, to win an Academy Award. The moment marked the beginning of Hollywood's reluctant move toward diversity and inclusion. Since then, minorities and women have struggled to attain Academy Awards recognition within a system designed to discriminate against them. In Hollywood Blackout: The Battle for Inclusion at the Oscars (Octupus Publishing, 2025) author Ben Arogundade interweaves

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36:32

Emma Casey, "The Return of the Housewife: Why Women...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/26

How has the rise of digital platforms changed domestic labour? In The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up (Manchester UP, 2025), Emma Casey, a Reader in Sociology at the University of York, explores the rise of the ‘cleanfluencer’. Situating the way specific online discourses now valorise and glamourise housework, the book gets under the false promise of happiness that hides the reality of gendered labour inequalities. Linking housework, digital and platform society, self-help,

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50:06

Randy Laist and Brian Dixon, "Figures of Freedom:...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/25

Figures of Freedom: Representations of Agency in a Time of Crisis takes on the idea and terminology of freedom, examining our understanding of this concept and our relationship to the word itself as well as what it means to society, culture, and politics. Randy Laist and Brian A. Dixon, two scholars who often explore popular culture to better understand the society and politics all around us, have brought their admirable skills to Figures of Freedom, where they have assembled a broad array of

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28:12

James Cartlidge, "The Rise of the Roguelite: Inside a...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/24

The Rise of the Roguelite: Inside a Gaming Phenomenon (CRC Press, 2025) analyzes the wave of roguelite games that have appeared over the past decade, putting them in historical context, informing readers about their development out of and relation to the roguelike genre that inspired them. The book includes discussions of the historical development and significance of roguelites, critical perspectives on topics such as gender, politics, philosophy, analyses of the influence of roguelikes on

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46:34

Eike Exner, "Comics and the Origins of Manga: A...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/23

Japanese comics, commonly known as manga, are a global sensation. Critics, scholars, and everyday readers have often viewed this artform through an Orientalist framework, treating manga as the exotic antithesis to American and European comics. In reality, the history of manga is deeply intertwined with Japan’s avid importation of Western technology and popular culture in the early twentieth century. Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History (Rutgers UP, 2021) reveals how popular U.S

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48:47

Ross Benes, "1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/22

In 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted our Bizarre Times (2025, University of Kansas Press) journalist Ross Benes examines low culture in the late 1990s. From pro wrestling and Pokémon to Vince McMahon and Jerry Springer, Benes reveals its profound impact and how it continues to affect our culture and society today. The year 1999 was a high-water mark for popular culture. According to one measure, it was the "best movie year ever." But as Benes shows, the end of the '90s

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68:28

Katie Rose Hejtmanek, "The Cult of CrossFit:...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/21

CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the people devoted to it. CrossFit claims to be many things: a business, a brand, a tremendously difficult fitness regimen, a community, a way to gain salvation, and a method to survive the apocalypse. In The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon (NYU Press, 2025), Dr. Katie Rose Hejtmanek examines how this exercise program is

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59:01

Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/20

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion, more than they spent on movies and video games combined.The rise of online sports gambling—the immediacy of betting with your phone, the ability of the

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69:43

Pil Ho Kim, "Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/19

Gangnam is an exclusive zone of privilege and wealth that has lured South Korean pop culture industries since the 1980s and fueled the aspirations of Seoul’s middle class, producing in its wake the “dialectical images” of the modern city described by Walter Benjamin: sweet dreams and nightmares, visions of heaven and hell, scenes of spectacular rises and great falls. In Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2024), Pil Ho Kim weaves

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79:29

Anne Korfmacher, "Fan Podcasts: Rewatch, Recap,...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/16

Starting from the observation of the ubiquity of fan podcasts engaging in media commentary, Fan Podcasts: Rewatch, Recap, Review (Routledge, 2024) explores three fan podcast genres in which commentary manifests as a structuring form: rewatch and reread podcasts, recap podcasts, and review podcasts. Anne Korfmacher conducts a formalist genre analysis of these podcasts, close reading nine case studies to describe how the three genres function and how different fan labor manifests in podcasting. Each

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46:05

Gabe Henry, "Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/15

In Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell (Dey Street Books, 2025), Gabe Henry presents a brief and humorous 500-year history of the Simplified Spelling Movement from advocates like Ben Franklin, C. S. Lewis, and Mark Twain to texts and Twitter. Why does the G in George sound different from the G in gorge? Why does C begin both case and cease? And why is it funny when a philologist faints, but not polight to laf about it? Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to write

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58:25

Henry Jenkins, "Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/13

The 60s produced a Baby Boom generation that catalyzed the dawn of a new era—the space age, the age of television, the global age, and the beginnings of civil rights. At the same time, a new paradigm for parenting was unfolding that put emphasis on permissiveness, defined by what it permitted – the free and unfettered impulses of children. Others worried that the wildness of children, personified by the characters in Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, was

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41:15

Keith J. Hayward, "Infantilised: How Our Culture...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/11

Have you ever noticed that in areas of everyday life, rather than being addressed like a mature adult, you're increasingly treated like an irresponsible child in constant need of instruction and protection?Noticing society's creeping descent into infantilisation is one thing, however understanding the roots and causes of the phenomenon is not quite so easy. But in this topical and vitally important new work, cultural theorist and academic, Dr Keith Hayward, exposes the deep social, psychological

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61:31

Mark Doyle, "John Cale's Paris 1919" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/04/08

John Cale's enigmatic masterpiece, Paris 1919, appeared at a time when the artist and his world were changing forever. It was 1973, the year of the Watergate hearings and the oil crisis, and Cale was at a crossroads. The white-hot rage of his Velvet Underground days was nearly spent; now he was living in Los Angeles, working for a record company and making music when time allowed. He needed to lay to rest some ghosts, but he couldn't do that without scaring up others. Paris 1919 was the

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1,330 results

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