New Books in Popular Culture

Marshall Poe
  • 3.5 (8)
  • Society & Culture
  • 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/popular-culture

  1. 1d ago

    Neil Selkirk on Why Photographs?

    When Neil Selkirk first saw one of Arbus’s photographs as a young man at someone’s house in London, it almost sent him screaming into the street. Unsettled and shaken, the encounter instead opened his eyes to the uncanny powers of photography. It turned Selkirk into an important photographer and, ultimately, an indispensable collaborator to some of the greatest photographers of all time, including Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, and other greats. In our conversation on great photographers and the art of photography, based on Selkirk’s edited book Why Photographs? (Warbler, 2026) we discuss essential dimensions of photography, including riveting detail, spontaneity, credibility, and the gift of chance, and how they were celebrated by early photographers but soon denounced by an establishment that saw photography as a threat to painting.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 3d ago

    Christmas Carols: An English Enchantment with John Potter (Yale UP, 2026)

    The English Christmas carol has been sung in court and cloister, tavern and field since medieval times. But with the first Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in 1880—and with a view to encouraging revellers into church—the humble carol became integral to the Christmas tradition. Carol concerts are attended all over the world, and the service at King’s College, Cambridge, has been broadcast since 1928 to millions of listeners. In Christmas Carols: An English Enchantment (Yale University Press, 2026), singer and author John Potter guides us through the development of this unique tradition. Carols, originating as secular delights of the medieval and Tudor court and chapel, were brought by the Victorians to a new urban audience. Priests, poets, and composers have rearranged ancient songs and created new ones ever since, incorporating European carols into the evolving English tradition. Taking us from their earliest origin to their flourishing during the early music revival, this is an enlightening account of a beloved phenomenon.   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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. 4d ago

    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.

  4. 5d ago

    Night Hawk: A Nineteenth-Century Superhero and the Dawn of American Mass Culture with Matthew Warner Osborn (U Chicago Press, 2026)

    On July 5, 1828, more than a century before Superman arrived on Earth, a superhero took flight in Philadelphia’s night sky. Buried on page three of a small local newspaper, the announcement of his arrival appeared under the title “The Night-Hawk, No. 1” with a cryptic epigraph from Romeo and Juliet: “I’ll be a candleholder and look on.” Who and what was the Night Hawk? As Dr. Matthew Warner Osborn reveals in Night Hawk: A Nineteenth-Century Superhero and the Dawn of American Mass Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2026), this was the sobriquet of a mysterious columnist for the weekly Mechanics’ Free Press, the first radical socialist newspaper in America. Dressed in a mysterious cloak, the Night Hawk soared over Philadelphia, revealing the evil crimes of prominent gentlemen, fighting murderous criminals, and calling out fraudulent moral authorities.  The Night Hawk was the ingenious invention of an impoverished actor, Cornelius A. Logan, who created the character as a public champion of Philadelphia’s Working Men’s movement, the first successful American labor party. The Night Hawk’s nocturnal adventures transformed their socialist ideology into an entertaining fantasy that dramatized the struggle against industrial exploitation and the degradation of working people. The success of the character made Logan into a celebrity, and he went on to become a popular and innovative comedian on the antebellum stage. A harbinger of the superheroes we know today, the Night Hawk promises to illuminate dark secrets from the past, but he can also shed light on our present. He ignites our need to see corrupt elites unmasked and held accountable for their actions, all while protecting the innocent and oppressed. Americans have always loved to fantasize about powerful superheroes who hide behind masks while chasing bad guys, and Dr. Osborn shows in this entertaining history how the Night Hawk was perhaps the first standard bearer for that enduring mystique.  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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. 5d ago

    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.

  6. 5d ago

    Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women with Eleanor Johnson (Princeton UP, 2026)

    For as long as human societies have been telling stories, the patriarchy has felt threatened by women. In this book, Eleanor Johnson provides an engaging cultural history of a figure she calls the “monstrous bitch,” the notorious female who has haunted the patriarchal imagination for centuries, feared for her sexual promiscuity, her exercise of reproductive agency and control, and her outspoken way of contesting patriarchal power.In a narrative brimming with insight, Johnson traces the origins of female monstrosity to the demoness Lamashtu of ancient Mesopotamia, showing how this infanticidal, hypersexual, loudmouthed monster appears in different guises throughout history. In classical Greece, she reemerges as the sorceress Medea, the child-devouring monster Lamia, and the vengeful Furies. In the medieval and early modern periods, she is an oversexed, baby-slaying, spellcasting witch; in the Romantic and Victorian eras, a vampiress; and in the modern age of psychoanalysis, a mental patient. After this longue durée history, Johnson shows how monstrous bitchery has been challenged and reinterpreted in contemporary cinematic popular culture, becoming an expression of heroism and resistance in films like Ginger Snaps, Jennifer’s Body, and The Witch. She demonstrates how deeply embedded the roots of misogyny have become, and why it is more critical today than ever that we expose and address them.An irreverent look at a pervasive trope that runs through four thousand years of Western culture, Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women (Princeton UP, 2026) reveals that while representations of the powerful woman have evolved over time, the fear and demonization of her remains the same. Eleanor Johnson is professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Her books include Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968–1980); Waste and the Wasters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England; Staging Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama; and Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. 6d ago

    How Dungeons and Dragons Changed the Way We Play with Aaron Trammell (Duke UP, 2026)

    First released in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons revolutionized game design and interactive media by allowing players to create and perform their own fictional characters in a fantasy world as expansive as their imaginations would allow. That freedom, and the rules that governed it, weren’t a creative coincidence. In How Dungeons & Dragons Changed the Way We Play (Duke University Press, 2026), Dr. Aaron Trammell excavates the game as an artifact of a burgeoning counterculture obsessed with individualism as well as quantification. Mapping the world onto a grid, building characters whose every trait is assigned a point value, and advancing the game’s narrative through dice throws—countless core mechanics are tied to numbers. Putting the game design of D&D into dialogue with the social and political tensions of the 1970s and 80s, Dr. Trammell illuminates how the integrated quantification in the game design led to reductionism, reinforced oppressive gender and racial norms, and accustomed generations of players to the bigoted, xenophobic mores of the Cold War era. He delivers a history of both how games can shape players and how players, united by their own shared values, can shape games in turn. Aaron Trammell is Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, author of The Privilege of Play and Repairing Play, and senior editor of Analog Game Studies. 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. Oct 15

    Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo with Timothy Thurston (U Washington Press, 2025)

    The podcast covers the book Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo (U Washington Press, 2025), which is about satirical speech traditons from Amdo region of Tibet and the role of zurza in Tibetan cultural production and modernity. Tune in to find out more about satire, languages, cultures of what's funny and why. 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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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/popular-culture

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