New Books Network
Music
Environmental Studies November 30, 2021

Performing Environmentalisms

Expressive Culture and Ecological Change

John Holmes McDowell, Katherine Borland, Rebecca Dirksen, and Sue Tuohy

Hosted by Matthew Brown
The volume, Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and Ecological Change, edited by John Holmes McDowell, Katherine Borland, Rebecca Dirksen, and Sue Tuohy (University of Illinois Press, 2021), illustrates the power of …

Music

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Interviews with musicians and scholars of music about their new books.

Science November 26, 2021

Of Sound Mind

How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World

Nina Kraus

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs we ask our brains to do. In Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World (MIT Press …
East Asian Studies November 24, 2021

Sound of the Border

Music and Identity of Korean Minority Nationality in China

Sunhee Koo

Hosted by Ed Pulford
When faced with some of the complex identity questions which often arise in borderlands, Koreans in China – known as Chosonjok in Korean, Chaoxianzu in Chinese – have long seemed …
Music November 24, 2021

Why You Like It

The Science and Culture of Musical Taste

Nolan Gasser

Hosted by David Golland
Why do we love the music we love? In Why You Like IT: The Science & Culture of Musical Taste (Flatiron Books, 2019) musicologist Nolan Gasser, architect of Pandora Radio’s Music …
Science, Technology, and Society November 16, 2021

Alien Listening

Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth

Daniel K. L. Chua and Alexander Rehding

Hosted by Sarah Kearns
In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world …
Art November 12, 2021

Communions

Adam Lehrer

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
[This episode contains explicit content.] Artists from Kurt Cobain to Amy Winehouse command fascination not only for their work but also for their drug addictions and the manner of their death. Communions …
Japanese Studies November 11, 2021

Tokyo Boogie-Woogie

Japan's Pop Era and Its Discontents

Hiromu Nagahara

Hosted by Shatrunjay Mall
Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan's Pop Era and its Discontents (Harvard University Press, 2017) by Hiromu Nagahara is the first English-language history of the origins and impact of the Japanese pop music industry. The …
Performing Arts November 5, 2021

Buffy Sainte-Marie

The Authorized Biography

Andrea Warner

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Andrea Warner's Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography (Graystone Books, 2018) tells the story, often in Buffy's own words, of the life of the remarkable artist and activist. Buffy Sainte-Marie's musical career is …
Popular Culture November 5, 2021

Raver Girl

Coming of Age in the 90s

Samantha Durbin

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan
A ’90s time capsule buried inside a coming-of-age memoir set against the neon backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Area's rave scene, Raver Girl (She Writes Press, 2021) chronicles Samantha’s double life …
Middle Eastern Studies November 2, 2021

Midnight in Cairo

The Divas of Egypt's Roaring 20s

Raphael Cormack

Hosted by Christopher Rose
One of the world’s most multicultural cities, twentieth-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and ’30s, a vibrant music, theater, film, and cabaret scene …
Music October 29, 2021

Industry

Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace

William Robin

Hosted by Kristen Turner
Presenting eclectic, irreverent marathons of experimental music in crumbling venues on the Lower East Side, Bang on a Can sold out concerts for a genre that had been long considered …
Popular Culture October 26, 2021

Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire

Punk Rock in the 1990s United States

David Pearson

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan
In Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire (Oxford University Press, 2020), musicologist David Pearson explores the changing landscape of punk in the United States in the 1990s. Pearson examines how the 1990s underground …
German Studies October 26, 2021

Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna

Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater

Caroline A. Kita

Hosted by Lea Greenberg
During the mid-19th century, the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner sparked an impulse toward German cultural renewal and social change that drew on religious myth, metaphysics, and spiritualism …
Music October 22, 2021

Major Labels

A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres

Kelefa Sanneh

Hosted by Franz Nicolay
Kelefa Sanneh was born in England, and lived in Ghana and Scotland before moving with his parents to the United States in the early 1980s. He was a pop music …
Performing Arts October 21, 2021

(Re:) Claiming Ballet

Adesola Akinleye

Hosted by Renee Garris
(Re:) Claiming Ballet (Intellect Books, 2021) by Dr. Adesola Akinleye explores the history of movement through ballet, representation, and the future of dance. Though ballet is often seen as a white …
Latino Studies October 21, 2021

Sounds of Crossing

Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño

Alex E. Chávez

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke UP, 2017), Alex E. Chávez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the …
Psychology October 20, 2021

Hold on

The Life, Science, and Art of Waiting

Peter Toohey

Hosted by Reyes Bertolin
What do you do when you're not asleep and when you're not eating? You're most likely waiting--to finish work, to get home, or maybe even to be seen by your …
Architecture October 19, 2021

Echo's Chambers

Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space

Joseph L. Clarke

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
A room’s acoustic character seems at once the most technical and the most mystical of concerns. Since the early Enlightenment, European architects have systematically endeavored to represent and control the …
Music October 18, 2021

A Punkhouse in the Deep South

The Oral History Of 309

Aaron Cometbus and Scott Satterwhite

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Told in personal interviews, A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History of 309 (University Press of Florida, 2021) is the collective story of a punk community in an unlikely …
Performing Arts October 6, 2021

The Art of Resonance

Anne Bogart

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Anne Bogart's The Art of Resonance (Methuen Drama, 2021) locates the essence of theatre in the experience of resonant vibration among performers and between performers and audience members. The point of art …