New Books In Popular Culture

Written from Neil Shister’s perspective as a journalist, student of American culture, and six-time participant in Burning Man, Radical Ritual: How Burning Man Changed the World (Counterpoint, 2019) presents the event as vitally, historically important. Shister contends that Burning Man is a significant player in the avant-garde, forging new social paradigms as liberal democracy unravels. Burning Man’s contribution to this new order is postmodern, a fusion of sixties humanism with state-of-the-art Silicon Valley wizardry. Shister is not alone in his opinion. In 2018, the Smithsonian dedicated its entire Renwick Gallery, located next door to the White House, to an exhibition of Burning Man art and culture. The festival intertwines conservative and progressive ideas. On one hand it is a celebration of self-reliance, personal accountability, and individual freedom; on the other hand it is based on strong values of inclusion, consensual decision making, and centered, collaborative endeavor. In a wonderful mix of n

Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson's Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Duke UP, 2020) is an engaging and interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary black popular culture and how to think about this broad and diverse landscape, especially in relation to power, capitalism, gender identity, and presidential politics. Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson have pulled together a fascinating array of scholars of popular culture, cultural critics, as well as those who have produced popular artifacts. A number of the cultural voices in Are You Entertained? are presented in interviews at the end of each section of the book, with artists thinking through questions about black popular culture from an expansive perspective as a maker of art and as someone who creates within the context of politics, economics, and culture. Are You Entertained? is a dynamic, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary analysis of contemporary shifts, trends, and debates within the context of seeing

In Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form (Harvard University Press, 2020), Sianne Ngai continues her theoretical work of demystifying the vernacular aesthetic categories encountered in late capitalist daily life. In this witty and penetrating book-length treatment of the affective experience of the “gimmick,” Ngai draws upon formalist literary criticism, post-Kantian aesthetic philosophy, and Marxist political economy in order to illuminate the historical production of this attractive yet unsettling cultural form. From The Magic Mountain to It Follows, smiley faces to subprime mortgages, Ngai’s image of the surprisingly ubiquitous gimmick emerges from a careful evaluation of the capitalist subject’s fundamental discomfort surrounding the coupling of value to labor-time. Michael Eby is a writer and researcher on contemporary art and digital culture. He lives in New York and tweets @michaeleby2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few mainstream filmmakers have as pronounced a disregard for the supposed rules of filmmaking as Martin Scorsese. His inventiveness displays a reaction against the “right” way to make a movie, frequently eschewing traditional cinematic language in favor of something flashy, unexpected and contrary to the way “proper” films are done. Yet despite this, he’s become one of the most influential directors of the last fifty years, a critical darling (though rarely a box office titan), and a fan favorite. In this book, Eric San Juan guides readers through the crooks, the mobsters, the loners, the moguls, and the nobodies of Scorsese's 26-movie filmography. The Films of Martin Scorsese: Gangsters, Greed, and Guilt (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) examines the techniques that have made him one of the most innovative directors in history. The book further looks at the themes that are the engine driving all of this, including themes of self-sabotage, alienation, faith, and guilt. Eric San Juan has written a number of books

Today we are joined by Barbara Keys, Professor of US and International History at Durham University, and author and editor of The Ideal of Global Sport: From Peace to Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). In our conversation, we discussed the origins of Olympism’s moral claims, the nexus between sport and human rights, and why it can be hard to understand the human costs of contemporary mega-events. In The Ideal of Global Sport, Keys joins nine scholars in a critical examination of what she calls the “liturgy” of Olympism: namely that international sports “promote peace;” “teach fair play and mutual understanding;” “combat racial, ethnic gender, religious, and national discrimination;” “fight poverty;” “protect the environment;” and promote human rights.” A series of thematic articles, each chapter touches on one or more of the above themes. The authors come from a wide range of disciplines, including history, political science, and anthropology. Their different theoretical perspectives allow

Paul Howe's book Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World (Cornell UP, 2020) offers a novel and provocative perspective on how we came to be living in an age of political immaturity and social turmoil. Award-winning author, Paul Howe, argues it's because a teenage mentality has slowly gripped the adult world. Howe contends that many features of how we live today--some regrettable, others beneficial--can be traced to the emergence of a more defined adolescent stage of life in the early twentieth century, when young people started spending their formative, developmental years with peers, particularly in formal school settings. He shows how adolescent qualities have slowly seeped upwards, where they have gradually reshaped the norms and habits of adulthood. The effects over the long haul, Howe contends, have been profound, in both the private realm and in the public arena of political, economic, and social interaction. Our teenage traits remain part of us as we move into adulthood. We now need in

Queen of the Gangsters: Stories by Margie Harris (Off-Trail Publications, 2011), is the first anthology of work of crime fiction writer Margie Harris. Edited by John Locke, Queen of the Gangsters bring the work of Harris, the first woman hardboiled crime fiction writer in history, to a larger audience. During the height of the 1930s gangster pulps, Harris wrote some of the roughest, toughest stories to be published in pulps such as Gangland Stories and Mobs. Readers question whether a woman could write stories that were so mired in the underworld. Harris was a mystery. She had spent time in the Chicago underworld, interviewed death-row inmates in San Francisco, and knew the lingo of the crime world that made her fiction come to life. Margie Harris is still a mystery today. Little is known of her life and what became of her after she finished writing for the pulps. In this collection of eight stories, Locke also presents readers with a biography of Harris, covering the limited details known about her life and

In his new book, Memoir of a Roadie: Axl said I made a great Cup of Tea…Scott Weiland liked The Carpenters…and Ozzy Drinks Rosé (2020) Joel Miller recounts his time in the early 2000s as a road for Stone Temple Pilots, Guns N’ Roses, Poison, and The Cranberries. Using his journal entries from being on the road, Miller shares what it was like for a young man in his early 20s to be on the road, learning about what it meant to be a roadie. Often humorous and also thoughtful, Miller brings readers into the backstage world of the hardworking crews that make sure performances and tours go on without a hitch (or at least without a hitch for the fans). Although the book does share insight into some of the biggest names in rock-n-roll during the time Miller was a roadie, the focus on the day to day life and Miller’s attempt at trying to navigate the world during this time is what readers will find most interesting. Rebekah Buchanan is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines

It would be hard to overstate the importance of culture. It teaches us, heals us, rips us apart and puts us back together in new and surprising ways. Given its fundamental importance to the human experience, it would make sense that looking at the sort of people who produce it for us, thinking about who they are, what their experiences are, and what that may say about the cultural products they then make. There is no product without a producer, and cultural products are no different, so understanding cultural products means thinking more critically about who produces them. This is the goal of the recently published ​Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries (Manchester University Press, 2020). Written by Orian Brook, Mark Taylor and, my guest today, Dave O’Brien, the book combines quantitative data analysis with personal interviews to weave together the complicated picture of who the people behind some of our most cherished experiences are. Dave O’Brien is Chancellor’s Fellow

For the thirtieth anniversary of its premiere comes the vivid and immersive history behind Martin Scorsese’s signature film Goodfellas, hailed by critics as the greatest mob movie ever made. In the first ever behind-the-scenes story of Goodfellas, film critic Glenn Kenny chronicles the making and afterlife of the film that introduced America to the real modern gangster—brutal, ruthless, yet darkly appealing, the villain we can’t get enough of. Featuring interviews with the film’s major players, including Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas (Hanover Square, 2020) shines a light on the lives and stories wrapped up in the Goodfellas universe, and why its enduring legacy is still essential to charting the trajectory of American culture thirty years later. Glen Kenny is a long-time film critic based in New York. He currently writes for RogerEbert.com and the New York Times. His Twitter handle is @Glenn_Kenny. Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire

Every fall on move-in day, parents tearfully bid farewell to their beloved sons and daughters at college dormitories: it is an age-old ritual. The residence hall has come to mark the threshold between childhood and adulthood, housing young people during a transformational time in their lives. Whether a Gothic stone pile, a quaint Colonial box, or a concrete slab, the dormitory is decidedly unhomelike, yet it takes center stage in the dramatic arc of many American families. This richly illustrated book examines the architecture of dormitories in the United States from the eighteenth century to 1968, asking fundamental questions: Why have American educators believed for so long that housing students is essential to educating them? And how has architecture validated that idea? Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) is the first architectural history of this critical building type.  Grounded in extensive archival research, Carla Yanni’s study hig

Media portrayals of Orthodox Jewish women frequently depict powerless, silent individuals who are at best naive to live an Orthodox lifestyle, and who are at worst, coerced into it. In Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Karen E. H. Skinazi delves beyond this stereotype to identify a powerful tradition of feminist literary portrayals of Orthodox women, often created by Orthodox women themselves. She examines Orthodox women as they appear in memoirs, comics, novels, and movies, and speaks with the authors, filmmakers, and musicians who create these representations. Throughout the work, Skinazi threads lines from the poem “Eshes Chayil,” the Biblical description of an Orthodox “Woman of Valor.” This proverb unites Orthodoxy and feminism in a complex relationship, where Orthodox women continuously question, challenge, and negotiate Orthodox and feminist values. Ultimately, these women create paths t

How does the music industry work in the modern world? In Selling Out: Culture, Commerce and Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2020), Bethany Klein, a Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds, explores the relationship between music and money, from the early years of the pop industry to contemporary society’s ‘promotional culture’. The book conceptualises ‘selling out’, and offers a nuanced understanding of how the idea developed and how it might still be important and relevant. Crucially, the book stresses the changing nature of selling out, not only over time but also through thinking critically about key categories such as race and gender. The book is packed with examples from across a range of genres and gives an overview of key theories to help understand the importance of ‘selling out’. The book is essential reading across the humanities and social scientists, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Beatles’ sojourn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg during the early 1960s is part of music legend. As Julia Sneeringer reveals in A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69 (Bloomsbury, 2018), though, this was just the most famous episode in the neighborhood’s momentous engagement with rock ‘n’ roll during that period, one of importance not just to music history but to the history of modern Germany. Located as it was outside the walls of the medieval city, St. Pauli was known for centuries as the entertainment quarter of Hamburg. The neighborhood had only recently recovered from the hardships of the postwar era when German club owners began booking English bands to play the new style of music that had just been introduced in Europe. The performances quickly proved a hit among teenage Germans, who flocked to out-of-the-way venues to watch the acts perform. As Sneeringer details, the encounters changed everyone involved, giving the musicians the cha

Public Performances: Studies in the Carnivalesque and Ritualesque (University Press of Colorado) offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and of the underlying political motivations they share. Illustrating the connections among three themes—the political, the carnivalesque, and the ritualesque—the volume provides rich and comprehensive insight into public performance as an assertion of political power. Dr. Jack Santino is professor of folklore and popular culture and has served as director of the Bowling Green Center for Popular Culture Studies. He was the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Professor at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, 2010–2011. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Northern Ireland and has conducted research in Spain and France. His documentary film on Pullman Porters, Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle, received four Emmy awards. His research centers on rituals and celebrations, with a particular focus on carnival and political and public r

A life shared with pets brings many emotions. We feel love for our companions, certainly, and happiness at the thought that we’re providing them with a safe, healthy life. But there’s another emotion, less often acknowledged, that can be nearly as powerful: guilt. When we see our cats gazing wistfully out the window, or watch a goldfish swim lazy circles in a bowl, we can’t help but wonder: are we doing the right thing, keeping these independent beings locked up, subject to our control? Is keeping pets actually good for the pets themselves? That’s the question that animates Jessica Pierce’s powerful Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets (University of Chicago Press). A lover of pets herself (including, over the years, dogs, cats, fish, rats, hermit crabs, and more), Pierce understands the joys that pets bring us. But she also refuses to deny the ambiguous ethics at the heart of the relationship, and through a mix of personal stories, philosophical reflections, and scientifically informed analyses of anim

In Gothic Queer Culture: Marginalized Communities and the Ghosts of Insidious Trauma (University of Nebraska Press), Laura Westengard examines the intersection of queerness and the gothic. Westengard’s scope is broad enough to encompass Lady Gaga’s meat dress, lesbian pulp fiction, Dracula, queer literature, and sadomasochistic performance art. What brings these diverse cultural objects together is the way they re-appropriate tropes of the gothic that have been used to marginalize queer and gender-variant people throughout history. If mainstream culture depicts queer people as predatory, monstrous, and threatening, the artists analyzed in Gothic Queer Culture find beauty and meaning in gothic tropes: in the crypt-like undergrounds of lesbian bars, the vampiric performance art of Ron Athey, and in the Frankensteinian practice of juxtaposing conflicting genres in the same text. The gothic then becomes a way to process trauma and rewrite the often-conservative genre of the gothic as something proudly queer, unse

Isabella Cosse’s Mafalda: A Social And Political History of a Global Comic (Duke University Press) is the definitive account of the most famous comic from Latin America, the Argentine strip Mafalda (1964-1973). Mafalda, a four-year-old girl living in a Buenos Aires apartment with her middle-class family, became an international symbol of dissent through her humorous, yet pointed critiques of authoritarianism. Cosse’s work of cultural history carefully situates the comic in the context of social modernization and political polarization in Argentina. Cosse reveals that the various characters reflect the heterogeneity of the Argentine middle classes during the years prior to the military dictatorship, when censorship was on the rise and standards of living grew more precarious for social sectors accustomed to modern comforts. Gender roles and generational change were also central themes in the comic, which used humor to explore the ways that middle-class families grappled with shifting configurations of power wi

The Routledge Handbook of Festivals (Routledge, 2018) offers a comprehensive evaluation of the most current research, debates, and controversies surrounding festivals. It covers a wide range of theories, concepts and contexts, such as sustainability, festival marketing and management, the strategic use of festivals, and their futures. The handbook features a variety of disciplinary, cultural, and national perspectives from an international team of authors. The handbook was edited by Dr. Judith Mair, Associate Professor and Discipline Leader of the Tourism Discipline Group in the University of Queensland Business School. Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) is a PhD candidate in Musicology at Florida State University. She is currently working on a dissertation about parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival celebrations.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game (University of Mississippi Press, 2020) is a collaboration between musician and ethnomusicologist Kyle DeCoste and more than a dozen members of the Stooges Brass Band, past and present. It is the culmination of five years of interviews, research, and writing. Told with humor and candor, it’s as much a personal account of the Stooges’ careers as it is a story of the city’s musicians and, even more generally, a coming-of-age tale about Black men in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. DeCoste and the band members take readers into the barrooms, practice rooms, studios, tour vans, and streets where the music is made and brotherhoods are shaped and strengthened. Comprised of lively firsthand accounts and honest dialogue, Can’t Be Faded is a dynamic approach to collaborative research that offers a sensitive portrait of the humans behind the horns. The Stooges Brass Band is based in New Orleans, Louisiana. They are known for incor