New Books in Film
Interviews with Scholars of Film about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
Episodes
April 28, 2025 • 35 mins
“Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.” So said W. H. Auden and so we see demonstrated in Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), which boldly employs every convention of the horror film in order to achieve a stunning, authentic portrait of a disturbing mind at work. But Mark is no ordinary slasher: he’s an artist who is also a perfectionist and wh...
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April 26, 2025 • 51 mins
It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we react to Andor Season 2, episodes 1-3. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the motives and aims of the rebellion and the Empire. Both sides have major coordination problems in these episodes, although the causes are very different. We explain and analyze the recurrent problems of authoritarian control and rebellion against it, and the way Andor comments upon them. We see a ...
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On February 29, 1940, African American actor Hattie McDaniel became the first person of color, and the first Black woman, to win an Academy Award. The moment marked the beginning of Hollywood's reluctant move toward diversity and inclusion. Since then, minorities and women have struggled to attain Academy Awards recognition within a system designed to discriminate against them.
In Hollywood Blackout: The Battle for Inclusion at th...
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In 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted our Bizarre Times (2025, University of Kansas Press) journalist Ross Benes examines low culture in the late 1990s. From pro wrestling and Pokémon to Vince McMahon and Jerry Springer, Benes reveals its profound impact and how it continues to affect our culture and society today.
The year 1999 was a high-water mark for popular culture. According to one measure, it was t...
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April 22, 2025 • 52 mins
Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. The Moving Image: A User's Manual (MIT Press, 2025) is the first authoritative account of how we have arrived here, together with the first definitive manual to help writers, ed...
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In 1927, the Hollywood stars (and spouses), Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr stood outside their California home, arms raised in fascist salute. The photo’s caption, referencing the couple’s trip to Rome the previous year, informs fans that the couple “greet guests at their beach camp in true Italian style.” How did “America’s sweetheart” and her husband, a swashbuckler on and off screen, both patriots who had promoted Liber...
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In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion, more than they spent on movies and video games combined.
The rise of online sports ...
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Boldly going where few fandom scholars have gone before, Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences (NYU Press, 2025) breaks from our focus on white fandom to center Black fandoms. Alfred L. Martin, Jr., engages these fandoms through what he calls the “four C’s”: class, clout, canon, and comfort.
Class is a key component of how Black fandom is contingent on distinctions between white, nationally recognized...
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Confessional Video Art and Subjectivity Private Experiences in Public Spaces (Bloomsbury, 2025) examines the development of the confessional subject in video art and demonstrates how it can provide a vital platform for navigating the politics of self, subjectivity, and resistance in society. In doing so, it reframes video art – the most ubiquitous and yet most understudied art form of recent decades – as an urgent socio-political t...
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On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Megan Hunt joins us to talk about her recent book, Southern By the Grace of God, which was published in 2024 by the University of Georgia Press.
Lke the media coverage of the civil rights era itself, Hollywood dramas have reinforced regional stereotypes of race, class, and gender to cleanse and redeem the wider nation from the implications of systemic racism. As Southern by the Grace of...
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April 1, 2025 • 51 mins
As part of the TV Milestones Series, Bridget Kies explores Murder, She Wrote (Wayne State University Press, 2025). Embark on a journey through the mysteries of Cabot Cove to learn why Murder, She Wrote is a timeless classic. Discover the secrets behind the enduring appeal of Murder, She Wrote (CBS, 1984-96) in this captivating investigation of the long-running mystery series. Kies details the show's lasting impact owing to several ...
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March 26, 2025 • 50 mins
In this episode, we sit down with Director and Producer Diana Nicolae and Editor and Camera Matt Jozwiakowski to discuss their documentary film, "Between Silence and Sin." The film explores the life and work of dissident Romanian poet Ana Blandiana, an artist whose voice was threatened, censored, and banned under the Communist dictatorship. In our conversation, we uncover the roots that inspired Diana’s desire to create this film, ...
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Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of musical and dramatic achievement. It not only helped define a generation of musical theatre lovers but is among the handful of shows that have contributed to our understanding of American musical identity at mid-century.
Bringing together contemporary scholars in music, theatre,...
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March 24, 2025 • 33 mins
In Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau said he wanted to “drive life into a corner” and “reduce it to its lowest terms.” We often feel the appeal of that idea: to get away from civilization and really “live.” But would that always be a pleasurable series of epiphanies? Would the natural world always provide a backdrop against which we could explore our “real” selves? Thoureau also said that “a man is free in proportion to the number...
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March 24, 2025 • 37 mins
Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) by Dr. Adam Kotsko explores the beloved science fiction franchise’s repeated attempts to reinvent itself after the end of its 1990s golden age. Beginning with the prequel series Enterprise, Adam Kotsko analyzes the wealth of content set within Star Trek’s sprawling continuity—including authorized books, the three “Kelvin Timeline” films, a...
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Why have dynamic and shifting hairstyles, from Katniss Everdeen’s Power Plait to JoJo Siwa’s outsize bows, become such a significant part of how girlhood is articulated in contemporary visual cultures? What do they tell us about how girlhood combines the qualities of resilience and sparkle needed to survive and thrive in turbulent post-recessionary times?
Drawing together analysis of popular film franchises, Disney animation, groun...
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Cinema under National Reconstruction (Rutgers UP, 2024) calls for a revisionist understanding of state film censorship during successive Cold War military regimes in South Korea (1961-1988). Drawing upon primary documents from the Korean Film Archive's digitized database and framing South Korean film censorship from a transnational perspective, Hye Seung Chung makes the case that, while political oppression/repression existed insid...
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March 10, 2025 • 33 mins
Every Western since Stagecoach seems to have been touted as “about the western.” To what degree is that true for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, George Roy Hill’s 1969 contribution to the genre? Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about how the film wonderfully reminds its viewers why they love westerns as it also offers its more hip viewers a vision of an alternative lifestyle–think Easy Rider with horses.
Tom Clavin’s Bandit...
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In Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity: Production, Representation, and Reception (Oxford UP, 2024), Nadira Khatun explores the contentious Muslim identity in contemporary India as reflected in recent Bollywood films. She argues that the approach towards Muslim identity in Bollywood films are influenced by the changing political landscape from Nehruvian India to the rise of BJP, which views Hindus and Muslims as separate rel...
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Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology (University of California Press, 2024) reveals that, in fact, filmmakers have been creating stereo and surround-sound effects for nearly a century, since the advent of talking pictures, and argues that their endurance owes primarily to th...
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