New Books In Popular Culture

In Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), Manuel Betancourt explores what makes Judy Garland’s landmark album great, and why it holds such a central place in queer culture. A hit when released in 1961 (it was the first album by a woman ever to win the Grammy award for Best Album), Judy at Carnegie Hall quickly came to occupy a central place in the gay imaginary. And yet by 1967 characters in the play The Boys in the Band would mock Judy fandom as the height of outdated cliché. What accounts for Judy Garland’s strange temporality, somehow always so ten years ago? Why is there such an intense association between Garland and nostalgia, and between Garland and nostalgia’s twin, failure? Why can we accept Judy Garland as a comeback kid but not as a success? Betancourt’s book explores these questions and more in a deep dive into the nature of queer fandom. Manuel Betancourt is a writer based out of Los Angeles. He earned his Ph.D. in English Literature from Rutgers University, USA. Andy B

If Jay Gatsby is the embodiment of patriotism, what does that mean for America? Join NBN host Lee Pierce and author Greil Marcus as they take a deep dive into how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vision of the American Dream has been understood, portrayed, distorted, misused, and kept alive. In Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment, and the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby" (Yale University Press, 2020), renowned critic Greil Marcus takes on the fascinating legacy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. An enthralling parable (or a cheap metaphor) of the American Dream as a beckoning finger toward a con game, a kind of virus infecting artists of all sorts over nearly a century, Fitzgerald’s story has become a key to American culture and American life itself. Marcus follows the arc of The Great Gatsby from 1925 into the ways it has insinuated itself into works by writers such as Philip Roth and Raymond Chandler; found echoes in the work of performers from Jelly Roll Morton to Lana Del Rey; and cont

In the middle of the twentieth century, a newspaper photographer who went by the name of Weegee took memorable pictures of New York City’s street life that appeared everywhere from tabloid newspapers to seminars on the history of photography. Christopher Bonanos’ book Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous (Henry Holt and Company, 2018), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, tells the story of his life from his childhood as an immigrant street kid on the Lower East Side to his years photographing murder scenes to his experiments with caricatures of celebrities. As Bonanos observes, Weegee “very early on grasped that the distinction between high culture and low culture was growing blurry.” Out of that insight he made a career and a body of work that tell us a lot about New York City, its journalism, and photography. Robert W. Snyder, professor emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers-University-Newark and Manhattan Borough Historian, is the author of Crossing Broadway: Washington Heig

Modest fashion is a growing, global multi-billion-dollar market. As a fashion trend, it has increasingly made its way into high-profile runways, has been endorsed by celebrities, and profiled in major fashion publications and news outlets.   Hafsa Lodi’s Modesty: A Fashion Paradox (Neem Tree Press, 2020) investigates how and why modest fashion became a mainstream global retail trend. It looks at the causes and key players behind the global modest fashion trend, while also exploring the controversies that surround the concept. Lodi interviewed over 40 important actors in the modest fashion movement, including designers, models, influencers, and entrepreneurs but also drew on personal experiences from her childhood in the United States and career as a fashion journalist in the Middle East to understand its history, evolution, and contradictions.  Hafsa Lodi is an American journalist who has been covering fashion for a decade. She has a BA from the Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto and an MA in Islamic Law

Television informs our perceptions and expectations of leaders and offers a guide to understanding how we, as organizational actors, should communicate, act, and relate. Join NBN host Lee Pierce (s/t) and editor/contributor Dr. Creshema Murray as they discuss Leadership Through the Lens: Interrogating Production, Presentation, and Power (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) an edited collection of television case studies about how the pervasive medium impacts our expectations of leadership, organizational life, and pedagogy. Looking at a variety of case studies, including classroom research in television media, The Americans, Black women in cable television news, workgroups, Total Divas, and electronic church leaders (to name just a few) this intriguing edited collection considers leadership and television through three predominant themes: production of knowledge, presentation of identity, and power of opportunity Recorded just after the murder of George Floyd, the interview focuses particularly on the complexities

In Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture (University of North Carolina Press), Grace Elizabeth Hale tells the epic story of the Athens, Georgia music scene. Hale explains how a small college town hard to get to even from Atlanta gave rise to dozens of great bands. Some of them are household names like R.E.M. and The B-52’s, but perhaps more interesting is the great music you might not know: the jittery dance-punk of Pylon, or the anguished, poetic songwriting of Vic Chesnutt. Hale also explores how these bands negotiated questions of race, class, sexuality, and authenticity. Cool Town shows how Athens, Georgia created a model of how you could “make it” without ever leaving your small town, and how a homegrown scene could feel like the biggest thing in the world. Grace Elizabeth Hale is the Commonwealth Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Virginia. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwrit

Many of us have stacks of cookbooks on our shelves, which we look through for ideas and inspiration, or to transport us to distant places with different foods, smells, experiences, and sometimes memories of our visits. Kennan Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, argues that there is more going on in those cookbooks than just recipes. In fact, Cookbooks Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) traces a variety of politics through a myriad of different kinds of cookbooks. Ferguson came to this project in an effort to try to understand where politics interacts with our everyday experiences. Cooking and seeking out recipes to guide our cooking is a very common experience that many of us pursue. At the same time, the compilation of recipes into a book—published with glossy photos, or copied and stapled in a church basement—creates a space where there is inclusion and exclusion. Ferguson explores these dynamics in Cookbook Politics, coming to see how the cultur

In his powerful new book, A Long, Long Way: Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation (Oxford University Press, 2020), Greg Garrett brings his signature brand of theologically motivated cultural criticism to bear on this history. After more than a century of cinema, he argues, movies have altered our cultural perspectives in the same way that religious narratives have. And in fact, religious traditions offer powerful correctives to our cultural narratives. A Long, Long Way incorporates both cinematic and religious truth-telling to the subject of race and reconciliation. In acknowledging the racist history of America's national art form, Garrett offers the possibility of hope for the future. Greg Garrett is a professor at Baylor University, teaching classes in creative writing & religion and culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 2020), Co-editors David Slucki, Loti Smorgon Associate Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University, Gabriel N. Finder, professor in the department of German Languages and Literatures and former director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia and Avinoam Patt, the Doris and Simon Konover Professor of Judaic Studies and director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of Connecticut, have assembled an impressive list of contributors who examine what is at stake in deploying humor in representing the Holocaust. This book comes at an important moment in the trajectory of Holocaust memory. As the generation of survivors continues to dwindle, there is great concern among scholars and community leaders about how memories and lessons of the Holocaust will be passed to future generations. Without survivors to t

Since 2020 has been such a horrifying year (and it’s only June!), it would be nice to relax a bit this summer and talk about something fun and apolitical like surfing. After all, what’s more chill then hanging at the beach and catching some waves? But wait a minute! Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing (University of California Press, 2014) is about imperialism, white supremacy, Apartheid, Cold War politics in Central America and Southeast Asia, genocide, and the ways in which large corporations commodify and suck the very soul out of vibrant countercultures. Scott Laderman tells us “surfing is not a mindless entertainment, but a cultural force born of empire (at least in its modern phase), reliant on Western power, and invested in neoliberal capitalism.” Whoa, total bummer, dude! Empire in Waves is part of the University of California Press’ “Sports in World History” series and uses surfing as a prism to explore a number of crucial political, economic, and cultural issues. Scott Laderman is a prof

This book by renowned Professor of History Jeremy Black presents an insightful and hugely entertaining exploration of the political and cultural context of the Bond books and films. In The World of James Bond: The Lives and Times of 007 (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), Jeremy Black offers a historian’s interpretation from the perspective of the 21st century, assessing James Bond in terms of the greatly changing world order of the Bond years—a lifetime that stretches from 1953, when the first novel appeared, to the present. Black argues that the Bond novels—the Flemng books as well as the often-neglected novels authored by others after Fleming died in 1964—and films drew on popular fears and anxieties in order to reduce the implausibility of the villains and their villainy. The novels and films also presented potent images of national character, explored the rapidly changing relationship between a declining Britain and an ascendant United States, charted the course of the Cold War and the subsequent post-1990 w

On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (s/t) interviews Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay of Oakland University on their new book Women Rapping Revolution.(University of California Press, 2020). Detroit, Michigan, has long been recognized as a center of musical innovation and social change. Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay draw on seven years of fieldwork to illuminate the important role that women have played in mobilizing a grassroots response to political and social pressures at the heart of Detroit’s ongoing renewal and development project. Focusing on the Foundation, a women-centered hip-hop collective, Women Rapping Revolution argues that the hip-hop underground is a crucial site where Black women shape subjectivity and claim self-care as a principle of community organizing. Through interviews and sustained critical engagement with artists and activists, this study also articulates the substantial role of cultural production in social, racial, and economic justice efforts. Resources men

Screening Reality: How Documentary Filmmakers Reimagined America (Bloomsbury, 2020) is a widescreen view of how American “truth” has been discovered, defined, projected, televised, and streamed during more than one hundred years of dramatic change, through World Wars I and II, the dawn of mass media, the social and political turmoil of the sixties and seventies, and the communications revolution that led to a twenty-first century of empowered yet divided Americans. In the telling, professional filmmaker Jon Wilkman draws on his own experience, as well as the stories of inventors, adventurers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, and activists who framed and filtered the world to inform, persuade, awe, and entertain. Interweaving American and motion picture history, and an inquiry into the nature of truth on screen, Screening Reality is essential and fascinating reading for anyone looking to expand an understanding of the American experience and today's truth-challenged times. Learn more about your ad choices.

It is hard to discuss the current film industry without acknowledging the impact of comic book adaptations, especially considering the blockbuster success of recent superhero movies. Yet transmedial adaptations are part of an evolution that can be traced to the turn of the last century, when comic strips such as “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and “Felix the Cat” were animated for the silver screen. Along with Barry Keith Grant, Scott Henderson (Dean and Head, Trent University Durham GTA) compiled a rich group of essays that represent diverse academic fields, including technoculture, film studies, theater, feminist studies, popular culture, and queer studies. Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame (University of Texas Press, 2019) presents more than a dozen perspectives on this rich history and the effects of such adaptations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

To what degree did each of The Beatles exhibit emotional intelligence in the band’s final year? You'll find out in the discussion I had with Kenneth Womack about his new book Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and The End of The Beatles (Cornell University Press, 2019). Womack is the author of a two-volume biography of the life and work of Beatles producer George Martin. His forthcoming book, John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life, will be available in October 2020. Topics covered in this episode include: --Womack explains what Solid State refers to and where Abbey Road might rank in the band’s legacy. (Fortunately, the Magical Mystery Tour album wasn’t a top-three choice of his!) --Using the Big 5 model for personality traits, what might be the dominant traits of The Beatles given the options of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. --Why the band had reached a point where, like a bad marriage, it couldn’t survive any longer. For a transcript of this episode, clic

Most books about American music ask how it sounded, who wrote it, or who performed it. In his new book, Everybody’s Doin’ It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917 (Norton, 2019), Dale Cockrell asks a different question: where is American music? His answer is in the brothels, dance halls, concert saloons, and cabarets of nineteenth-century New York City. Cockrell tells a story of popular music created and enjoyed within a sexualized and commercial environment that featured robust and constant exchange between black and white people during slavery times and the deepening segregation of Reconstruction-era America. Weaving together material from police reports and governmental investigations, Cockrell has found a rich source of information about the life of working-class people in urban America, and in the process has uncovered a network of musicians and spaces that nurtured American popular culture. These places of unbridled behavior were sometimes sites of degradation including for the prostitutes force

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, and co-founder and chair of the World Science Festival. He is well known for his TV mini-series about string theory and the nature of reality, including the Elegant Universe, which tied in with his best-selling 2000 book of the same name. In this episode, we talk about his latest popular book Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe (Random House, 2020) Until the End of Time gives the reader a theory of everything, both in the sense of a “state of the academic union”, covering cosmology and evolution, consciousness and computation, and art and religion, and in the sense of showing us a way to apprehend the often existentially challenging subject matter. Greene uses evocative autobiographical vignettes in the book to personalize his famously lucid and accessible explanati

In his new book, Planet Auschwitz: Holocaust Representation in Science Fiction and Horror Film and Television (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Brian Crim explores the diverse ways in which the Holocaust influences and shapes science fiction and horror film and television by focusing on notable contributions from the last fifty years. The supernatural and extraterrestrial are rich and complex spaces with which to examine important Holocaust themes - trauma, guilt, grief, ideological fervor and perversion, industrialized killing, and the dangerous afterlife of Nazism after World War II. Planet Auschwitz explores why the Holocaust continues to set the standard for horror in the modern era and asks if the Holocaust is imaginable here on Earth, at least by those who perpetrated it, why not in a galaxy far, far away? The pervasive use of Holocaust imagery and plotlines in horror and science fiction reflects both our preoccupation with its enduring trauma and our persistent need to “work through” its many legacies.

In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Elizabeth Engelhardt, co-editor of the new collection The Food We Eat, the Stories We Tell: Contemporary Appalachian Tables (Ohio University Press, 2019), also edited by Lora Smith and published by Ohio University Press. We are also joined by Courtney Balestier who is a contributor to the collection. Though the collection is diverse in genre – including academic essays alongside poetry, memoir, and illustration – the contents are united around challenging and complicating a notion of a single Appalachia. The editors and many of the contributors are connected to the Appalachian Food Summit, a symposium of foodways scholars, professionals, and enthusiasts who meet for dinners, dialogues, and annual conferences. Engelhardt describes the popular and scholarly attention to Appalachian stereotypes as “a dead end conversation” that the collection tries to avoid and undo by highlighting the creativity and diversity of the region, its people, and its food. As Engelhardt

Ashley Mears’ new book Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit (Princeton University Press, 2020) provides readers with a closer look at the global party circuit. A lifestyle that offers million-dollar birthday parties, megayachts on the French Riviera, and $40,000 bottles of champagne. In today’s New Gilded Age, the world’s moneyed classes have taken conspicuous consumption to new extremes. In Very Important People, sociologist, author, and former fashion model Ashley Mears takes readers inside the exclusive global nightclub and party circuit—from New York City and the Hamptons to Miami and Saint-Tropez—to reveal the intricate economy of beauty, status, and money that lies behind these spectacular displays of wealth and leisure. Mears spent eighteen months in this world of “models and bottles” to write this captivating, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking narrative. She describes how clubs and restaurants pay promoters to recruit beautiful young women to their venues in orde