New Books in Communications

10 Episodes
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By: Marshall Poe

Interviews with Scholars of Media and Communications about their New BooksSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Jaqueline Berndt, "The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
#166
Last Tuesday at 9:00 AM

In recent years, manga and anime have attracted increasing scholarly interest beyond the realm of Japanese studies. This Companion takes a unique approach, committed to exploring both the similarities and differences between these two distinct but interrelated media forms. Firmly based in Japanese sources, The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime (Cambridge UP, 2024) offers a lively and accessible introduction, exploring the local contexts of manga and anime production, distribution, and reception in Japan, as well as the global influence and impact of these versatile media. Chapters explore common characteristics such as visuals, voice, serial narrative and characters, whilst also hi...


Carola Lorea and Rosalind Hackett, "Religious Sounds Beyond the Global North: Senses, Media and Power" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
#12
Last Sunday at 9:00 AM

What makes sounds “religious”? How are communities shaped by the things they hear, play, or listen to? This book foregrounds connections between sounds, bodies, and media in the private and public life of communities beyond the Global North, analyzing diverse configurations of the category of sound and various sonic ontologies to usher in a more inclusive global anthro-history of religious sounds.

Religious Sounds Beyond the Global North (Amsterdam University Press, 2024) implements a “sonic turn” in the study of religion by engaging with a diversity of auditory, musical, and embodied practices. Dislodging the Global North as the main point of r...


Stan Bunger, "Mornings with Madden: My Radio Life With An American Legend" (Triumph, 2024)
#283
Last Saturday at 9:00 AM

John Madden is synonymous with football. He was the television face and voice of the nation's most popular sport, the namesake of its best-selling sports video game, and the man with the highest career winning percentage of any NFL coach. Despite his international fame, there was a side of Madden known only to those who listened to morning radio broadcasts in the San Francisco Bay Area. That's where Madden grew up, lived, and died. It's where for decades he found joy in a daily chat with his hometown radio station: a chance to unwind, tell stories, and impart his...


Seung-hoon Jeong, "Biopolitical Ethics in Global Cinema" (Oxford UP, 2023)
#227
02/07/2025

If world cinema studies have mostly displayed national cinemas and their transnational mutations, Seung-hoon Jeong’s global frame highlights two conflicting ethical facets of globalization: the ‘soft-ethical’ inclusion of differences in multicultural, neoliberal systems and their ‘hard-ethical’ symptoms of fundamentalist exclusion and terror. 

Reflecting both and suggesting their alternatives, global cinema draws attention to new changes in subjectivity and community that Jeong investigates in terms of biopolitical ‘abjection’ and ethical ‘agency.’ In this frame, Biopolitical Ethics in Global Cinema (Oxford UP, 2023) explores a vast net of post-1990 films circulating in both the mainstream market and the festival circuit. Ultimately, t...


Marijam Did, "Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World" (Verso, 2024)
#32
02/03/2025

Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World (Verso, 2024) by Marijiam Did asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead of fuelling hyper-materialist, reactionary agendas. Combining cultural theory and materialist critiques with accessible language and personal anecdotes, industry insider Marijam Did engages both novices and seasoned connoisseurs. From the innovations of Pong and Doom to the intricate multiplayer or narrative-driven games, the author highlights the multifaceted stories of the gaming communities and the political actors who organise among them. Crucially, the focus also includes the people who make the games, shedding light on the brutal processes necessary t...


Ewa Stańczyk, "Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland" (U Press of Mississippi, 2024)
#603
02/01/2025

Antisemitic caricatures had existed in Polish society since at least the mid-nineteenth century. But never had the devastating impacts of this imagery been fully realized or so blatantly apparent than on the eve of the Second World War. 

In Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland (U Press of Mississippi, 2024), scholar Ewa Stańczyk explores how illustrators conceived of Jewish people in satirical drawing and reflected on the burning political questions of the day. Incorporating hundreds of cartoons, satirical texts, and newspaper articles from the 1930s, Stańczyk investigates how a visual culture that was essentially hosti...


Dan Archer, "Voices from Nepal: Uncovering Human Trafficking through Comics Journalism" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
#24
01/31/2025

How can we better protect survivors? How can we learn from their stories without causing further harm?

With a pen in one hand and watercolours in the other, graphic journalist Dan Archer embarks on an investigation into human trafficking and how comics can be used to empower survivors and raise awareness of human rights issues. Based on years of research and reporting, Voices from Nepal: Uncovering Human Trafficking through Comics Journalism (University of Toronto Press, 2024) holds a mirror up to the ways that international and local NGOs study and combat trafficking, reflecting on both the positive and ne...


Understanding Disinformation
#251
01/30/2025

How do we discern what is factual from what isn’t? In this episode, Dr. Colleen Sinclair joins us to discuss the functions of disinformation, and to unpack how our own biases, emotions and vulnerabilities influence what we are willing to believe.

Our guest is: Dr. H. Colleen Sinclair, Associate Research Professor of Social Psychology at Louisiana State University. She takes a theory-grounded, multi-method approach to tackling social issues. She works on: understanding the hazards of the information highway, including dis/misinformation; investigating means to improve equity and access in educational, policy, and correctional settings; and examining ch...


Marshall Poe on the New Books Network, Technology, and the Future of Academic Communication
#89
01/27/2025

Peoples and Things host, Lee Vinsel, is joined by guest host and Peoples & Things producer, Joe Forte, Media Projects Manager with Virginia Tech Publishing, in interviewing Marshall Poe, the founder and editor of the New Books Network, the largest academic podcasting platform in the world. The trio discuss how the New Books Network came to be; how digital technologies open up new tools for academic work; changing media landscapes, including the recent bursting of a podcasting bubble; and the future of academic communication and publishing.

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Spacing Out with Dallas Taylor of 20,000 HZ
#42
01/27/2025

Today we talk to Dallas Taylor, host of the most popular sound podcast on the planet, Twenty Thousand Hertz. I like to think our show sounds pretty good, but Twenty Thousand Hertz is next-level audio production, some of the very best in the podcasting business. And Dallas prides himself on making a podcast for absolutely everyone. As he told me, he tries to make a show that’s just as mainstream and approachable as a true crime show. 

We start off with a chat about Dallas’s background in music, how he entered the world of sound design...