New Books in Film

Marshall Poe
  • 4.6 (19)
  • TV & Film
  • Updated Weekly

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/film

  1. 1d ago

    Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw: Adachi Masao and Japan's Cinema of Revolution with William Andrews (Awai Books, 2026)

    Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw: Adachi Masao and Japan’s Cinema of Revolution (Awai Books, 2026) is the first-ever English-language book on Adachi Masao. Based on extensive interviews with the director and years of research, this study offers a comprehensive portrait of the filmmaker and his provocative oeuvre – from socially engaged pink films and New Wave cinema to experimental documentary and avant-garde psychodrama. An essential read for those interested in cinema, history, or politics. Author William Andrews is a Tokyo-based writer and translator originally from Britain. He is the author of The Japanese Red Army: A Short History and Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture, from 1945 to Fukushima. His translations in the visual and performing arts have been widely published. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. Oct 18

    Action Bodies: VFX, Identity, and Embodiment in Blockbuster Cinema with Drew Ayers (U Texas Press, 2026)

    Exploring how digital visual effects have changed the representations of the body and identity in action films. When Harrison Ford appeared digitally de-aged in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, audiences witnessed more than a technical feat; they saw how visual effects are reshaping what bodies can be on screen. In Action Bodies: VFX, Identity, and Embodiment in Blockbuster Cinema, Drew Ayers (Eastern Washington University) examines how the contemporary action genre redefines embodiment across human, superhuman, animal, and machine forms. Ayers argues that action films are a crucial site for understanding how popular media both reflect and shape cultural debates about identity, citizenship, disability, and ethics in the era of big data and algorithmic culture. Through case studies including Top Gun: Maverick, The Woman King, The Fast & the Furious franchise, and Avatar: The Way of Water, Ayers explores how VFX-altered bodies carry ideological weight. While the action genre has long leaned conservative in its politics of identity, its digitally mediated bodies also generate unexpected opportunities: glimpses of more inclusive and flexible modes of embodiment. As artificial intelligence and synthetic imagery continue to transform film production, Action Bodies demonstrates why careful attention to action cinema is essential for understanding how contemporary culture imagines and engineers the future of the body. Drew Ayers is a professor of film at Eastern Washington University. He is the author of Spectacular Posthumanism: The Digital Vernacular of Visual Effects, and his work has been published in animation, Configurations, Convergence, and Film Criticism. Cory Barker is a faculty member in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University, where he teaches courses on film, television, and digital culture. Newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. Oct 17

    Reading for Pleasure: Working Women and the Popular Romance in Early Twentieth-Century Britain with Lise Shapiro Sanders (Bloomsbury, 2026)

    Lise Shapiro Sanders is the author of Reading for Pleasure: Working Women and the Popular Romance in Early 20c Britain, published in October 2026 by Bloomsbury Academic Press.  Reading for Pleasure analyzes the early 20th-century British romance as a genre directed at young working women, including those employed in factories, shops and department stores, and the service industry. It explores a range of popular romances in the form of novels, films, and periodicals, and thinks about how these texts provided a form of affective pleasure and virtual sensory experience that indulged the sensuality of sexual desire and as well as the glamor of fashionable garments and settings. It suggests that even as popular romance foregrounded the pleasure of fantasy, it was also invested in working women’s social, sexual, and political agency. The first three chapters examine discourses of beauty, fashion, and fantasy that circulated in romance, whereas the last two chapters and the conclusion explore how these discourses came into conflict with working women’s material reality – including the need for access to contraception, sexual knowledge, and control over reproduction. Ultimately, Reading for Pleasure offers important insights into the politics of reading for pleasure, how gender, sexuality, and class shape these politics, and why there are many reasons to not only take pleasure in romance but to also take it seriously. Lise Shapiro Sanders was employed as a professor of literature and cultural studies at Hampshire College for 27 years. Her previous books include Consuming Fantasies: Labor, Leisure, and the London Shopgirl, 1880-1920 (Ohio State University Press, 2006); Bodies and Lives in Victorian England: Science, Sexuality, and the Affliction of Being Female, co-authored with Pamela K. Stone (Routledge, 2020); Embodied Utopias: Gender, Social Change, and the Modern Metropolis, co-edited with Amy Bingaman and Rebecca Zorach (Routledge, 2002); and a critical edition of Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s 1875 novel Janet Doncaster (Victorian Secrets, 2017).  Jane Hwang Degenhardt is a professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. Oct 6

    Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity with Samar Abdel-Rahman (American U of Cairo Press, 2026)

    Samar Abdel-Rahman's Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity (American University of Cairo Press, 2026) explores male stardom in Egyptian cinema produced during the early years following the Free Officers' revolution of 1952, through the lives and careers of three key stars: Omar al-Sharif, Ismail Yassin, and Farid Shawqi. In attempting to find a balance between the traditional and the modern, the Nasser era placed an emphasis on education, work, and gender equality. Yet, faithfulness to Egyptian traditions and values remained a key part of the state’s vision of collective identity. Samar illuminates how these stars promoted a civic identity that aligned with the regime’s ambitions, and how each of them—through melodrama, comedy, and action—negotiated a different facet of masculine identity that spoke to the ambivalent constructions of hegemonic masculinity during this critical post-colonial period. Samar Abdel-Rahman holds a PhD in film studies from King's College London and  is currently a lecturer of World Cinema at the University of Liverpool. Her research, which focuses on stardom and performance in Middle Eastern and North African Cinemas, has been published in edited volumes including The Routledge Companion to European Cinema. Saman Nasser holds an MA in world history from James Madison University, where he currently works as an educational staff. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Oct 5

    Weapons

    A true dark comedy, Zach Cregger’s Weapons (2025) combines a satire of suburbia, a study of addiction, and the satisfaction of a fairy tale. The film works so well because it takes its time to develop interesting characters to the point where the viewer occasionally forgets the horror-movie label and is drawn into the human story of regular people trying to cope with terrible events. Aunt Gladys is terrific, but she’s only part of what makes Weapons so compelling.   Bumper music by John Deley. Weapons works exactly like one of Grimms’ fairy tales; you can find a handsome edition of them here.  Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Mike Takla is on substack at The Grumbler’s Almanac.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Sep 27

    Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026)

    Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026) is an edited collection exploring utopias ad dystopias in films and literature. It challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia.  The book brings together film, literary, and utopian studies scholars from across the world. As an interdisciplinary collection, it covers a wide range of utopias and dystopias, from those of visionaries as varied as William Morris and George Lucas to such fresh new and distinctive voices like Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and N. K. Jemisin.  Contributors dismantle myths about utopian and dystopian film, literature, and television. Several chapters analyse the nature of utopian and dystopian fiction and its important relationship to our present moment. What's the future of utopia? What does it mean to be a utopia today? Do we still need the warnings of dystopia?  Whether through ecocritical work, work aimed at decolonizing utopian studies, debates about our relationship with technology and the nonhuman, forms of utopian hope and pessimism, or new thinking about cinematic and literary techniques and production, the essays offer fresh insight into the subject area and something to interest any reader. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. Sep 25

    Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah with Thomas Schatz (U California Press, 2026)

    Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge.Between 1989 and 2004, all the old studios either merged with other media giants or were swallowed up by even bigger diversified behemoths, leading to an infusion of money and fast-tracking the digital revolution. Yet even as CGI and piles of cash fueled a new breed of blockbusters—Batman and Titanic, Toy Story and The Lord of the Rings—an indie ethos permeated the industry. And at the crossroads of commodification and aesthetic vision, auteurs ranging from Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino to Sofia Coppola and Ang Lee became household names.Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah with Thomas Schatz (U California Press, 2026) traces these trajectories, which increasingly clashed and commingled during the 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in nothing short of a new golden age—and perhaps the last gasp of the century-old studio system. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. Sep 17

    Sarah Meehan O'Callaghan, "Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body" (Routledge, 2026)

    Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body (Routledge, 2026) provides an epistemology of the body as it relates to subjectivity through an analysis of selected works of Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett. Presented in three parts, the book explores a fundamental premise: that there is a traumatic and alienating dimension to embodiment that resists expression within representational systems and is core to the being of any subject. In Part One, The Epistemology of the Body, Meehan O'Callaghan approaches a theory of the body as traumatic by framing it as a question, a gap in knowledge through the lens of psychoanalysis and theatre studies. Part Two, The Body of Drama, is devoted to a study of the body in the works of Beckett and Artaud from the perspective of psychoanalysis. Part Three, The Body Between Being and Non-Being, provides a deeper exploration of how the interrogation of the body opens onto a question of being and uses the insights gained from the dialectical encounter of psychoanalysis with the specific works of Beckett and Artaud to apply them to contemporary and scholarly issues of the body. Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives through Beckett and Artaud will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for academics and scholars of Lacanian studies, psychoanalytic studies, the body, disability studies, and literary and theatre studies. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
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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/film

Information

  • Creator
    Marshall Poe
  • Years Active
    2011 - 2026
  • Episodes
    605
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network
  • Show Website
    New Books in Film

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