New Books In Popular Culture

In Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond (Wayne State University Press, 2016), M. L. Liebler curates an exhaustive collection of essays about Detroit music by a diverse group of music scholars, journalists, and musicians. Instead of relying on familiar narratives about Motown and rock and roll, this anthology engages a vast array of musical genres and sub-genres, while sharing the oft-surprising hidden histories of artists, institutions, and communities integral to Detroit’s unique sound. Heaven Was Detroit begins with former California Poet Laureate Al Young’s meditation on his childhood obsession with early to mid-20th-century Detroit jazz and ends with an essay by Jarrett Koral about Jett Plastic Recordings, the 21st-century vinyl-only record label he runs out of his parents’ basement. In between are a mix of new and classic essays about Detroit jazz, blues, pre-Motown soul, Motown, rock, hip-hop, techno, and more. Kimberly Mack holds a Ph.D. in English from UCLA, and she is an Assistant Pro

In History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), historian M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska examines Americans’ changing relationship to history in the 1960s and 1970s. Using the 1976 Bicentennial celebration and planning, Rymza-Pawlowska explores the new ways Americans engaged with the past. Starting with historical television such as Little House on the Prairie and the advent and success of miniseries such as Roots, Rymsza-Pawlowska examines the various ways Americans began to interact with history. Rymsza-Pawlowska characterizes Americans’ relationship with history prior to this time period as separate from the present. She argues that the shift in the ways in which popular culture interacted with history created more emotional connections to history—considering feelings and motivations of historic individuals. Through live interactions, immersive museums, historical fiction, and living history events, Americans’ relationship with history was fo

In her new book, The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling (Columbia University Press, 2017), Natalie Robins examines the life of writer and socialite Diana Trilling (1905-1996). Trilling wrote for The Nation, Harpers, and Partisan Review as well as popular magazines McCalls and Vogue. In addition, she wrote Mrs. Harris: The Death of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor and four other books. The wife of professor and literary critic Lionel Trilling, Diana also edited his work, serving as his most trusted confidant. Robins shares the inner struggles Diana endured through her relationship with Lionel as well as her competing public and private work. In this thorough biography, Robins’ extensive and well-researched history of Trilling sheds insight into Diana’s life. She examines Trilling’s position in anticommunist liberal politics, family feminism, and the university literary circles. Spotlighting an influential member of New York City culture, Robins’ work on Diana Trilling is an important addition to l

What happened in popular entertainment when African Americans could access the stage after the Civil War? In Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry (University of Illinois Press, 2018), Sandra Graham tells the complex story of how folk spirituals composed by enslaved people but transformed for the stage became the core repertoire for the emerging black entertainment industry after 1865. She begins by telling the familiar story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers who first popularized the concert spiritual during their successful tours of the United States and Europe in the 1870s. She expands this narrative, however, by including the crucial contributions of choirs that followed in Fisk’s footsteps especially the Hampton Institute Singers and the Tennesseans. The truly ground-breaking work in the monograph, however, is her study of commercial spirituals and the performers who popularized them in all-black minstrel shows and, at the end of the nineteenth century, in plays with music, such as Uncle T

As part of its effort to forge a new secular Jewish nation, the nascent Israeli state tried to limit Jewish religiosity. However, with the steady growth of the ultraorthodox community and the expansion of the settler community, Israeli society is becoming increasingly religious. Although the arrival of religious discourse in Israeli politics has long been noticed, its cultural development has rarely been addressed. In his new book Directed by God: Jewishness in Contemporary Israeli Film and Television (University of Texas Press, 2016), Yaron Peleg explores how the country’s popular media, principally film and television, reflect this transformation. In doing so, it examines the changing nature of Zionism and the place of Judaism within it. Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s work here.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/

Today on the New Books in Music podcast James Cook discuses his book, Memory Songs: A Personal Journey into the Music that Shaped the 90s (Unbound, 2018). The book details the author’s own adolescent musical obsessions from The Beatles to John Barry from Led Zeppelin to The Waterboys that led him to form his own band Flamingoes with his twin brother, Jude, and move to London in the early 1990s and begin the long the often perilous road to becoming a full-time working musician. The book is part memoir, part music criticism, part social history, and a vivid tale of life lived on the periphery of a vibrant era in British cultural history. Originally a musician and songwriter, James Cook released two albums with his band Flamingoes: the acclaimed “Plastic Jewels” in 1995 and “Street Noise Invades the House” in 2007. Present from the start of the Britpop boom, The Flamingoes toured the UK and Europe extensively, selling 20,000 records worldwide. In 2009, one of James’ short stories wa

As America changed in the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the Southern music industry was changing as well. The music studios of Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals–known as the “country-soul triangle”–began producing some of the most important music of the 1960s and 1970s. In Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), Charles Hughes chronicles the ways in which inter-racialism, cultural appropriation, racism, and racial politics affected the musical studios and the country and soul industry. How could two separate musical sounds, one white and country, and the other Black and soul, be considered completely separate when many of the musicians and producers worked in the same buildings? Charles Hughes explains all! Adam McNeil is PhD student in History at the University of Delaware where he is an African American Public Humanities Initiative and Colored Conventions Project Scholar. He received his M.A. in History at Simmo

The pursuit of a musical career crosses the mind of most children. But, for most, a vocation is nothing more than a farfetched fantasy that will never come true. Music is often considered more appropriate as a leisure activity that need be abandoned when a person enters adulthood. How are men and women to forge a career as a musician when it is largely considered taboo to pursue such a position as a lifetime career? In Destined for Greatness: Passions, Dreams, and Aspirations in a College Music Town (Rutgers University Press, 2018), sociologist Dr. Michael Ramirez examines the lives of 48 independent rock musicians who sought out a music career in a college town that is renowned for its music scene. Ramirez used a life-course approach to understand the wealth of experience that led to some, but not all, individuals to fashion careers in the music industry. Ramirez recommends a nuanced understanding of factors—focusing on the intersections—that enable some people to pursue musical careers well into their adult

In his new book, The World’s Din: Listening to Records, Radio and Films in New Zealand 1880–1940 (Otago University Press, 2018), Peter Hoar, a senior lecturer in radio and media history at Auckland University of Technology, explores how new technology shaped how New Zealanders experienced the very act of listening in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Hoar traces how this cultural revolution in sound reflected new global possibilities in recordings, radio, and film that New Zealanders made all their own.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 1870s, one of the most popular forms of entertainment attended by American working-class men was variety—a succession of unrelated bawdy acts that preceded its tamer later nineteenth-century cousin, vaudeville. Gillian M. Rodger, author of Just One of the Boys: Female-to-Male Cross-Dressing on the American Variety Stage (University of Illinois Press, 2018), introduces the reader to some of the stars of these shows—male impersonators, women who dressed and performed as men on stage. Focusing on the period between about 1870 and World War I, Rodger traces how their acts changed over time as American ideas about gender and class also changed. Along the way, Rodger presents a fascinating cast of characters who defied social and sexual norms on stage and off. A few women even managed to marry their same-sex partners. But Rodger’s book is about more than just an obscure theatrical performance practice because her work illuminates the intersections and connections between class, sexuality, and gender. Histori

Follow-up interviews are always fun. Listen to my follow-up interview with Dahlia Schweitzer, author of Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World (Rutgers University Press, 2018). I talk with her and Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars and the co-creator of iZombie and Party Down as well as the author of several young adult novels including Rats Saw God and Slave Day. In this interview we talk about how Schweitzer’s book discusses some of the ways in which Thomas’ series iZombie is ahead of its time, while Thomas shares some of the stories behind co-creating and writing iZombie. In addition, we discuss Thomas’ work on Veronica Mars, how the series came to be, as well as the ways in which it relates to Schweitzer’s new book. It’s a great interview for zombie lovers and marshmallows alike. Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English at Western Illinois University. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. She is

Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Popular Culture (Lexington Books, 2017) by Sophia Rose Arjana (with Kim Fox), takes us on a riveting journey through the world of superheroes and villains from the streets of New York to Pakistan. The book is a creative, masterful, and fascinating analysis of female Muslim superheroes in popular comic books and animation.  Through the use of global examples, such as Ms. Marvel, Burka Avenger and Bloody Nasreen, just to name a few, Arjana engages her readers beyond reductive discussions of the veil, sexuality, and gender to highlight the ever-complex ways in which female Muslim superheroes can help us engage constructively with ideas of Islamic feminism, the Muslim female body, intersectionality, and even notions of violence. With supernatural powers, such through the mystical arts (i.e., Sufism), or human qualities of courage and bravery, the Muslimah superheroes featured in this study capture the real and complex lives of Muslim women globally, and the vast negotiatio

Today we are joined by Gregory Snyder, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY), and author of Skateboarding LA: Inside Professional Street Skateboarding (New York University Press, 2017).  In Skateboarding LA, Snyder explores the world of professional street skateboarding in order to explain how the skate subculture produce a rich urban community and significant profits for professional skaters in spite of the widespread illegality of the sport. Based on almost a decade of ethnographic interviews with skateboarders, videographers, and promoters, Snyder de-centers notions of skateboarders as criminals and vandals. Instead he describes skaters as creative forces in the city: impromptu repair crews, street architects, amateur historians, urban explorers, and public space activists.  He shows how skaters see public spaces differently: stairs, benches, handrails, and fountains become potential obstacles for tricks.  They produce their own language to describe new m

Today we are joined by Jesse Berrett, author of Pigskin Nation: How the NFL Remade American Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2018). Berrett is a high school history teacher at University High School in San Francisco. He earned a PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley, and has worked as a rock critic, television columnist, and book reviewer. In his new book, Berrett looks at the National Football League of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and how President Richard M. Nixon channeled his love for football into a useful tool to achieve political goals. Going to college football games like the 1969 Texas-Arkansas clash, talking baseball or drawing up plays for NFL coaches was not only a truly passionate response by Nixon, but also a productive wedge issue that allowed the president to connect with the audience he most coveted — conservative, middle-class American fans, particularly in the South. Nixon always identified with the underdog, and using sports metaphors about teamwork, character

What do Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Canadian popular culture have in common? This is the question that Mark A. McCutcheon seeks to answer in his new book, The Medium Is the Monster: Canadian Adaptations of Frankenstein and the Discourse of Technology, published in 2018 by Athabasca University Press. In this unique and penetrating analysis, McCutcheon argues that Shelley’s 1818 novel essentially reinvented the word “technology” for the modern age, establishing its connections with ominous notions of manmade monstrosity. In the twentieth century, this monstrous, Frankensteinian conception of technology was globalized and popularized largely through Marshall McLuhan’s media theory and its numerous, diverse adaptations in Canadian popular culture. The Medium is the Monster establishes Frankenstein, and its various adaptations, as the originating intertext for a modern conceptualisation of technology that has manifested with a unique potency in Canadian pop culture, informing w

In her book, Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Jazz Age Chicago (Chicago Review Press, 2017), Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi presents the story of Sabella Nitti, an Italian immigrant arrested in 1923 an accused of murdering her husband. Sabella was found guilty and became the first woman in Chicago sentenced to hang. Through meticulous research into court documents and other public records, Lucchesi shares the riveting narrative of Sabella’s case. Situating Sabella in the 1920s, and looking at the ways in which this case shows how the legal system set up to defend her failed Sabella at every turn, Lucchesi’s book walks readers through the trial where there was no evidence and no witnesses, but reporters and the jury knew one thing for certain, Sabella must be guilty: she was ugly. Describing how the press, judges, and juries decided the guilt or innocence of women based on their looks, Lucchesi examines how Sabella’s fellow inmates such as Beulah and Belva were able to charm their

How did Nepal become synonymous, in the minds of many Westerners, with the idea of a mystical paradise and a place to find enlightenment? How did Kathmandu become the subject of songs by countercultural icons such as Janis Joplin and Cat Stevens? What did Nepalis make of the strange seekers who turned up on their doorsteps? In his book Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal (University of Chicago Press, 2017), anthropologist and historian Mark Liechty offers a deeply researched and thoroughly engaging to all of these questions and more.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico (University of California Press, 2017) explores the definitive changes that the justice system as well as criminal ideas and practices underwent during the 1920s-1950s. For his most recent book, Pablo Piccato investigated spaces, actors, and fictions that shaped the complicated relationship between crime, justice, and truth during the consolidation of the post-revolution Mexican state. Through a series of compelling arguments, the author shows how impunity, the lack of transparency in judicial processes, and infamy are related to a constant quest for truth and justice that the state could not provide to Mexicans.  From the abolition of the jury system in the 20s, to the emergence of crime fiction, the author shows that men and women, the press, detectives, policemen, and even murderers themselves, shaped both ideas and practices in regards to violence, law-breaking, and the normalization of injustice in the country. Pamela Fuentes is Assistant Professo

How does the portrayal of a character like Apu matter? What does the representation of South Asian TV characters tell us about society at large?  In her new book, South Asians on the U.S. Screen: Just Like Everyone Else? (Lexington Books, 2018), Bhoomi Thakore uses interviews and audience studies to explore these questions and more. By having participants list South Asian characters they’ve seen on TV, she learns a lot about representation in addition to the positive and negative characteristics attributed to these characters. Often times South Asians are relegated to minor characters in shows and Thakore explores how The Mindy Project breaks out of this mold. Exploring ideas and concepts including “forever foreigners,” assimilation, and acculturation, Thakore analyzes this media sociologically. The book also sheds light on the portrayal of South Asian female characters specifically, as well as how some shows emphasize the “every-day”-ness of some South Asian characters versus those portrayed as tokens. Overa

In his book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), scholar John Gennari examines the intersectionalities between African American and Italian American cultures in the United States. Using an auto-ethnographic lens, Gennari explores this relationship, what he calls “the edge”, between the two cultures. Gennari examines the intersectionalities in music, film, sports, and foodways, spotlighting the edge as a way to highlight the ways in which the relationship between Italian American and African American cultures has been both joyous and beneficial as well as fraught with violence and suspicion. He posits that an Afro-Italian sensibility has vitalized American culture, even with the conflicts over urban spaces, political and personal respect, and overlapping histories of exclusion. Through his personal connections as well as critical and well-researched chapters on the intersections between these two cultures, Gennari gives readers a deeper understand