New Books Network

Art May 24, 2022

Takedown

Art and Power in the Digital Age

Farah Nayeri

Hosted by Allison Leigh

For centuries, art censorship has been a top-down phenomenon—kings, popes, and one-party states decided what was considered obscene, blasphemous, or politically deviant in art. Today, censorship can also happen from …

Literary Studies May 20, 2022

How to Do Things with Dead People

History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol

Alice Dailey

Hosted by John Yargo

Alice Dailey’s How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol (Cornell University Press, 2022) is an exploration of Shakespeare’s chronicle plays through the …

Asian American Studies May 16, 2022

Our Laundry, Our Town

My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond

Alvin Eng

Hosted by Deidre Tyler

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 processes the fractured urban oracle …

Art May 16, 2022

Actional Poetics-Ash She He

The Performance Actuations of Alastair MacLennan, 1971-2020

Sandra Johnston, Chérie Driver, and Paula Blair

Hosted by Brandon Sward

A retrospective monograph of Alastair MacLennan’s performance art practice, its influence on the Belfast art scene, and its relationships with wider art histories. Actional Poetics-Ash She He: The Performance Actuations …

African American Studies May 13, 2022

Black Dragon

Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination

Zachary F. Price

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

In Black Dragon: Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination (Ohio State UP, 2022), Zachary F. Price illuminates martial arts as a site of knowledge exchange between Black, Asian …

Music May 11, 2022

From Servant to Savant

Musical Privilege, Property, and the French Revolution

Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden

Hosted by Kristen Turner

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 publisher. But, how did that concept …

Anthropology May 9, 2022

The Sound of Salvation

Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China

Guangtian Ha

Hosted by Irene Promodh

The Jahriyya Sufis—a primarily Sinophone order of Naqshbandiyya Sufism in northwestern China—inhabit a unique religious soundscape. The hallmark of their spiritual practice is the “loud” (jahr) remembrance of God in …

Critical Theory May 6, 2022

Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski

The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century

Dhanveer Singh Brar

Hosted by Gummo Clare

Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century (Goldsmiths Press, 2021) uses three Black electronic musics – footwork, grime, and the work of the …

Performing Arts May 6, 2022

Choreographing in Color

Filipinos, Hip-Hop, and the Cultural Politics of Euphemism

J. Lorenzo Perillo

Hosted by Isabel Machado

Investigating the development of Filipino popular dance and performance since the late 20th century, Choreographing in Color: Filipinos, Hip-Hop, and the Cultural Politics of Euphemism (Oxford UP, 2020) reveals how …

Music May 4, 2022

Move On Up

Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power

Aaron Cohen

Hosted by Bradley Morgan

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 heyday from the 1960s to the 1980s …

Gender Studies May 4, 2022

Vulgar Beauty

Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium

Mila Zuo

Hosted by Ann Choi

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 laughter when Ali Wong unabashedly enacts …

Popular Culture April 28, 2022

I'm Not Holding Your Coat

My Bruises-And-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion

Nancy Barile

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan

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 (Bazillion Points, 2022). From disaffected Catholic schoolgirl …

Media April 27, 2022

Media Disrupted

Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars

Amanda D. Lotz

Hosted by Gummo Clare

Has the internet really been the main culprit behind the upheaval of the contemporary media industries? In Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars (MIT Press, 2021), Professor Amanda Lotz …

Performing Arts April 27, 2022

This Is My Office and Notes on My Mother's Decline

Two Plays

Andy Bragen

Hosted by Andy Boyd

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 Press: This is …

Performing Arts April 22, 2022

The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939

Engagement and Experimentation

Rania Karoula

Hosted by Andy Boyd

Rania Karoula's The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) offers a readable and engaging summary of an important chapter in American theatre history. Now safe from the 30s-era anti-Communist backlash that …

Critical Theory April 19, 2022

Black Culture, Inc.

How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America

Patricia A. Banks

Hosted by Dave O'Brien

Why do corporations fund cultural organisations and events? In Black Culture, Inc.: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America (Stanford UP, 2022), Patricia Banks, Professor of Sociology at Mount …

Popular Culture April 19, 2022

Taking a Stand

Contemporary US Stand-Up Comedians As Public Intellectuals

Jared N. Champion and Peter C. Kunze

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan

Stand-up comedians have a long history of walking a careful line between serious and playful engagement with social issues: Lenny Bruce questioned the symbolic valence of racial slurs, Dick Gregory …

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast April 15, 2022

A Vertical Art

On Poetry

Simon Armitage

Hosted by Mark Klobas

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 easily lend itself to grand statements …

Popular Culture April 15, 2022

Hell of a Hat

The Rise of '90s Ska and Swing

Kenneth Partridge

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan

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 themselves dehydrated to the peppy rhythms …

Gender Studies April 13, 2022

Queering Drag

Redefining the Discourse of Gender-Bending

Meredith Heller

Hosted by Isabel Machado

Drawing on a rich body of archival and ethnographic research, Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender-Bending (Indian UP, 2020) illuminates diverse examples of theatrical gender-bending. It shows how, in each case, standard …