New Books in Communications

Marshall Poe
  • 4.8 (6)
  • SOCIAL SCIENCES
  • UPDATED DAILY

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

  1. 2D AGO

    The Religion Department: An Online Learning Platform with Andrew Mark Henry and Andrew Ali Aghapour

    The Religion Department is an online learning platform dedicated to the academic, nonsectarian study of religion, created by the team behind Religion for Breakfast — the YouTube channel with over a million subscribers. Co-founded by Dr. Andrew Mark Henry and Dr. Andrew Ali Aghapour, The Religion Department offers guest lectures, multi-week seminars, and guided reading courses taught by scholars of religion, all designed to make university-level religious studies accessible to anyone, anywhere. Inspired by creator-driven platforms like Dropout TV and Nebula, The Religion Department is built on a user-funded model that compensates scholars fairly for their teaching and expertise. Current offerings include a guided reading of Attar's twelfth-century Sufi masterpiece The Conference of the Birds with Dr. Patrick D'Silva, a 52-week course on key concepts in religious studies led by Dr. Henry, and many more upcoming programs. In this episode, we talk with the co-founders about how Religion for Breakfast grew into something bigger, what The Religion Department offers, and why they believe the academic study of religion deserves a home beyond the traditional university. Learn more and become a member at religiondepartment.com Dr. Andrew Mark Henry is a scholar of late Roman religion who holds a PhD from Boston University. He is the creator and host of Religion for Breakfast, and the 2026 recipient of the American Academy of Religion's Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. Dr. Andrew Ali Aghapour is a scholar of religion and science who holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is an award-winning comedian and storyteller, and has served as the Consulting Scholar of Religion and Science for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

    45 min

  2. 3D AGO

    Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney eds., "Media Rurality" (Duke UP, 2026)

    Media Rurality (Duke UP, 2026), edited by Darin Barney and Patrick Brodie, investigates the centrality of rural places and people within the media systems and technologies that shape daily life in and across rural and urban settings alike. Edited by Darin Barney and Patrick Brodie, from the boglands of Ireland to data centers in the Oregon countryside to the homemade media systems of rural Tanzania, the contributors to this volume show how rural territories are highly mediated, technologized spaces profoundly enmeshed with global capitalism and colonialism. Approaching the study of rurality through a materialist lens that foregrounds infrastructure, this collection shows how rural spaces often bear the environmental brunt of capitalist development while being relegated to the economic and cultural periphery.Contributors: Christopher Ali, Patrick Bresnihan, Patrick Brodie, Darin Barney, Jenna Burrell, Jordan B. Kinder, Burç Köstem, Cindy Lin, Emily Ng, Lisa Parks, Anne Pasek, Esther Peeren, Nicole Starosielski, Ishita Tiwary, Hunter Vaughan, Ayesha Vemuri, Megan Wiessner, Assatu Wisseh.  This episode features a conversation with host Sadie Couture, editors Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney, and contributors Burç Köstem and  Megan Wiessner.  Sadie Couture is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at McGill University, and an incoming Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. https://www.sadiecouture.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

    1h 17m

  3. APR 28

    Are Libraries the Hidden Book Market? with Erin Cox of Words & Money

    What if the most powerful tool in your book marketing strategy isn't social media — it's your local library? In the debut episode of The Publishing Playbook, host Sarah Russo of Page One Media sits down with publishing veteran Erin Cox to unpack one of the industry's most overlooked opportunities: libraries. With a career spanning publicity at Scribner and HarperCollins, agenting, and her current role as publisher of Publishing Perspectives and co-founder of Words and Money, Erin brings rare, 360-degree expertise to the conversation. Together, Sarah and Erin break down how libraries actually buy books, why they're a powerful (and underutilized) marketing channel for authors, and the misconceptions that are costing publishers real money. Whether you're a debut author, a seasoned writer, or publishing-curious, this episode will change how you think about getting your book into readers' hands. Words & Money: https://www.wordsandmoney.com/ Publishing Perspectives: https://publishingperspectives.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

    29 min

  4. APR 26

    Kirsten Clark, "Practical Project Management for Librarians" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

    Librarians continue to work under budget constraints while still needing to increase the user experience and remove barriers to library resources. Learning to evaluate the best options for managing projects to accomplish goals while balancing with the reality of day-to-day work needs is integral to overall success.In Practical Project Management for Librarians (Bloomsbury, 2025), Kirsten Clark takes readers through the process of learning how to balance the goals of the project with the reality of working in libraries today, what key questions can help move readers effectively through the project process and choose the right tools, best practices to ensure sustainability in project plans as well as outcomes, and how to incorporate diversity, inclusion, and accessibility principles into your project management. This practice guide provides step-by-step instructions to determine what project management tools and techniques match the needs of the particular library project and person/team's skills level, while also providing these in the context of libraries' specific cultures and norms. Guest: Kirsten Clark is the director of Library Enterprise Systems at the University of Minnesota Libraries, USA, where her department oversees systems for five system campuses as well as ensures consistent and transparent application of access policies for students, faculty, researchers, and community users. In a career that has spanned working for small liberal arts colleges to research universities, she has led projects within a variety of library areas including research and instruction, collection development, access and information services, and information technology and systems. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

    55 min

  5. APR 25

    Jonathan Gray and Daphne Gershon, "Reading Media: How to Do Textual Analysis" (NYU Press, 2026)

    Reading Media: How to do Textual Analysis reinvigorates one of media and cultural studies’ most foundational methods at a moment when it is most needed, showing its continuing vitality by adapting it to new media environments, cultural objects, and scholarly questions.The volume insists that the close study of meaning, form, and representation remains central to understanding media’s power. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars, the book offers a diverse toolkit: from narratological and semiotic analysis of film and TV, to historical poetic accounts of TikTok, multimodal analysis of Afrobeats music videos, and postcolonial criticism of games. Essays extend the scope of textual analysis to unexpected objects—such as plastic waste, memes, and refugee-authored media—while others demonstrate how texts operate across platforms, genres, and transmedia franchises. Beyond offering new and improved approaches to textual analysis, each chapter illustrates its approach using a specific case study, functioning both as a step-by-step how-to guide and as an example of textual analysis in action.Reading Media advances a vision of textual analysis that is rigorous yet flexible, attuned to both aesthetics and politics, and responsive to today’s media environment. Essential for students and scholars in media, communication, and cultural studies, Reading Media both reaffirms and renews textual analysis as an indispensable way of engaging with the mediated worlds that shape contemporary life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

    45 min

  6. APR 23

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

    Since the 1990s, a largely underground upwelling of trans creativity has helped new trans identities, communities, and political movements come together. In Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds (University of California Press, 2026), Dr. Laura Horak provides an entryway to the wildly diverse and creative cinema made by trans creators, including those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Overlooked until now, this rich collection of media ranges in genre from romantic comedies to horror films and asks essential questions about how to be human and how to craft a livable life in a world on fire. Okay.Using the fundamentals of film studies, Horak reveals the innovative approaches taken by trans and gender-nonconforming artists to explore how we relate to other people, what it's like to have a body, and how we survive in an oppressive society. These filmmakers tackle the challenging paradox of representing trans lives when greater visibility is associated with ever-increasing levels of harm. In the process, they produce art that emphasizes trans survival and resilience and imagines a more expansive world for trans communities. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

    36 min

  7. APR 22

    The Information State: How is the State Surveilling and Manipulating us These Days?

    In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny interviews Jacob Siegel, writer, Army veteran, and author of The Information State. Siegel traces how military information operations, post‑9/11 surveillance programs, and Silicon Valley’s rise converged to create a new public‑private regime of control over information, attention, and consent. He discusses the intellectual roots of technocratic governance from Francis Bacon and Leibniz through progressivism, World War I propaganda, and cybernetics, and explains how the “information state” differs from classical authoritarianism. Finally, Siegel reflects on Trumpism, the tech counter‑elite around figures like Elon Musk, and how AI may usher in a more “Pharaonic” and quasi‑spiritual form of politics beyond traditional expert‑driven technocracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

    54 min

  8. APR 22

    Sarah Murray, "Powered by Smart: A Prehistory of Everyday AI" (NYU Press, 2026)

    Powered by Smart traces the techno-cultural evolutions that made artificial intelligence feel more familiar than futuristic. From wearables and streaming platforms to home voice assistants and AI toasters, smart is an inescapable feature of postdigital life. Today, thousands of products and platforms define smart as routine automation and friendly digital kinship. Yet smartness was not always so digital. Sarah Murray uncovers the century-long process through which smart became synonymous with seamless interaction between bodies and machines, showing how this intimate interfacing helped to normalize today’s algorithmic world.Offering a critical, feminist prehistory of everyday AI, Powered by Smart reveals how the pursuit of convenience, comfort, and efficiency has long been a gendered campaign. Smartness has often been associated with women — from early switchboard operators and industrial designer Lillian Gilbreth’s test kitchens to Jane Fonda’s Jazzercise empire and Disney’s computer-housewife PAT in Smart House. These moments illuminate how machine intelligence has already been made ordinary, and how the smart ideal was built over time through domesticity, discipline, and desirability.Moving across factory floors, suburban kitchens, exercise trends, and digital homes, Murray shows how twentieth-century innovations in wearability, solutionism, and recognition laid the groundwork for our contemporary tolerance of — and attachment to — AI. Far from a sudden technological revolution, everyday AI emerged through decades of cultural conditioning of smart life as a caring, attentive endeavor that cast human–machine harmony as both natural and necessary. Powered by Smart reframes artificial intelligence not as the next frontier of progress, but as the logical extension of a much older dream of efficiency made ordinary and personal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

    55 min
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About

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Information

  • Creator
    Marshall Poe
  • Years Active
    2011 - 2026
  • Episodes
    1.9K
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network
  • Show Website
    New Books in Communications

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