Performing Arts

Performing Arts

episodes

Interviews with performing artists and scholars of the performing arts about their new books.

Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)

May 29, 2026

The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film

Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds.
Hosted by Pete Kunze

Since the release of Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning horror hit Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrigue…

Yiddish Ethnography and An-ski

May 29, 2026

Yiddish Ethnography and An-ski

Hosted by YIVO Institute

Sh. An-ski (Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport, 1863-1920) was a writer in Russian and Yiddish, a revolutionary, a wartime relief worker, and an ethnographer who…

Andrea Zarafshon Moore, "Audible Loss: New Music and the Crisis of Memory" (Fordham UP, 2025)

May 26, 2026

Audible Loss

Andrea Zarafshon Moore
Hosted by Kristen Turner

It is a compulsion of the human race to find a way to memorialize those we have lost and why we have lost them, from a gravestone of a loved one to wa…

Shane Breaux, "Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns" (Routledge, 2026)

May 24, 2026

Reverberations of Culture

Shane Breaux
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns (Routledge, 2026) by Dr. Shane Br…

Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026)

May 22, 2026

A Century of Hitchcock

Tony Lee Moral

For over a century, Alfred Hitchcock has remained one of cinema's most influential directors. Known as the Master of Suspense, this visionary filmmake…

Marissa Nicosia, "Shakespeare in the Kitchen" (Routledge, 2026)

May 19, 2026

Shakespeare in the Kitchen

Marissa Nicosia
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Audiences and scholars alike have long remarked that Shakespeare’s poems and plays record the pleasures and perils of the table. Shakespeare in the Ki…

Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)

May 12, 2026

Act Black

Es-pranza Humphrey
Hosted by Sullivan Summer

Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmf…

David Womersley, "Thinking Through Shakespeare" (Princeton UP, 2026)

April 28, 2026

Thinking Through Shakespeare

David Womersley

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all …

Michael Lee Nirenberg, "Cinematic Immunity" (Feral House, 2026)

April 25, 2026

Cinematic Immunity

Michael Lee Nirenberg
Hosted by Daniel Moran

The unbelievable insider stories of how they “got the shot,” Cinematic Immunity tells the story of New York City's movie industry from the crew member…

Jes Battis, "It's Only Forever: Labyrinth" (ECW Press, 2026)

April 25, 2026

It's Only Forever

Jes Battis
Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan

Jes Battis' new book, It's Only Forever. Labyrinth (ECW Press, 2026) is a wild, intimate, and political deep dive into Jim Henson’s 1986 classic starr…

Laura Horak, "Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds" (U California Press, 2026)

April 23, 2026

Trans Cinema

Laura Horak
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Since the 1990s, a largely underground upwelling of trans creativity has helped new trans identities, communities, and political movements come togeth…

Dybbuks, Golems, S. An-ski, and Jewish Legends in Times of Fear

April 18, 2026

Dybbuks, Golems, S. An-ski, and Jewish Legends in Times of Fear

Gabriella Safran
Hosted by YIVO Institute

S. An-ski’s play The Dybbuk, a story of possession set in a shtetl (think The Exorcist meets Fiddler on the Roof), is the foundation of modern Jewish …

The Shawshank Redemption in China: An Interview with Matti Lehtonen

April 17, 2026

The Shawshank Redemption in China

How can an entirely foreign cast perform the American “The Shawshank Redemption” in the Chinese language across China? In this episode of the Nordic A…

Daniel Rachel, "This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich" (Akashic Books, 2026)

April 4, 2026

This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll

Daniel Rachel
Hosted by Bradley Morgan

Over the last seven decades, some of rock 'n' roll's most celebrated figureheads have flirted with the imagery and theater of the Third Reich. From Ke…

Danielle Bainbridge, "Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive" (NYU Press, 2026)

April 3, 2026

Currencies of Cruelty

Danielle Bainbridge
Hosted by Sullivan Summer

Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive (NYU Press, 2026) is a bold and incisive reconsideration of the relationship …

The 50th Anniversary Tour of Patti Smith's Horses: A Conversation with Caryn Rose

March 28, 2026

Three Chords and Blessed Noise

Caryn Rose
Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan

Caryn Rose's Three Chords and Blessed Noise (2026) is an ode to the lost art of the tour diary. In November of 2025, Patti Smith and her band embarked…

John Kuhn, "Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

March 27, 2026

Making Pagans

John Kuhn
Hosted by Jane Degenhardt

Today’s guest, John Kuhn, is the author of Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England (U Pennsylvania Press, …

Jewface: “Yiddish” Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley

March 16, 2026

Jewface

Hosted by YIVO Institute

With his fake beard, putty nose, and thick Yiddish accent, the “stage Jew” was once a common character in vaudeville, part of a genre that mocked immi…

Jessica Clarke, "A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

March 13, 2026

A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre

Jessica Clarke

"Roman theatre" is a term often used to describe the theatre of ancient Italy during the second and third century BCE. Plautus and Terence are referre…

Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)

March 10, 2026

Screen Captures

Stephen Lee Naish
Hosted by Joel Tscherne

Movies open a window into our collective soul. In Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency (Lever Press, 2026), Stephen Lee Naish guides us throu…