New Books in Communications

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 religious communities instead of recognizing the syncretic culture manifesting in Hindu-Muslim unity. By analyzing the representation of Muslims in various films like Roja, Fanna, Mission Kashmir, Black Friday, New York, A Wednesday, Sarfarosh, she shows that the militant portrayal of Muslims is good for commercial success as opposed to a secular image. Overall, the study problematizes Muslim identity formation in Bollywood against the backdrop of nationalism and communalism in India.Author: Dr. Nadira Khatun, Associate Professor of Communications, Xavier University, IndiaHost: Dr. Nilanjana Paul, Associate Professor of History, Department of History, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She is the author of Bengal Muslims and Colonial Education, 1854-1947: A Study of Curriculum, Educational Institutions and Communal Politics, Routledge, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

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 the longstanding battles between stereo and mono technologies. Throughout the book, Eric Dienstfrey analyzes newly discovered archival materials and myriad stereo releases, from Hell’s Angels (1930) to Get Out (2017), to show how Hollywood’s financial dependence on mono prevented filmmakers from seeing surround sound’s full aesthetic potential. Though studios initially explored stereo’s unique capabilities, Dienstfrey details how filmmakers eventually codified a conservative set of surround-sound techniques that prevail today, despite the arrival of more immersive formats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Succinct and eloquent, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025) is an essential primer on how to face the threats to privacy in today's age of digital technologies and AI.With the rapid rise of new digital technologies and artificial intelligence, is privacy dead? Can anything be done to save us from a dystopian world without privacy?In this short and accessible book, internationally renowned privacy expert Daniel J. Solove draws from a range of fields, from law to philosophy to the humanities, to illustrate the profound changes technology is wreaking upon our privacy, why they matter, and what can be done about them. Solove provides incisive examinations of key concepts in the digital sphere, including control, manipulation, harm, automation, reputation, consent, prediction, inference, and many others.Compelling and passionate, On Privacy and Technology teems with powerful insights that will transform the way you think about privacy and technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Sarah Stang, editor, joins Jana Byars to talk about Monstrosity in Games and Play (Amsterdam UP, 2024). Monsters fascinate us. From ancient folklore to contemporary digital games, they are at the core of the stories we tell. They reflect our fears, deepest desires, and the monstrosity hidden within ourselves. Monsters hold a mirror to our contemporary society and reveal who we truly are. This edited collection examines monsters and monstrosity in games and play. Monsters are a key feature of most games: we fight, kill, and eat them--and sometimes, we become them. However, monsters in games and play are not only entertaining but also a reflection of the monstrosity of our world. In this book, twenty-two scholars explore how themes such as mental health, colonialism, individualism, disability, gender, sexuality, racism, and exclusion are reflected in the monsters we interact with in games, play, and our daily lives both online and offline. Monstrosity in Games and Play is recommended to readers interested in the monstrous in contemporary game cultures and their surrounding societies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Russia has a long history of publishers operating from abroad, producing books and periodicals for a Russian-speaking audience. One notable example is The Bell (Kolokol), published by Alexander Herzen, the Russian writer and thinker who emigrated in the mid-19th century.The waves of Russian emigration in the 20th century—beginning with those fleeing the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution—led to the creation of numerous Russian-language publishing ventures, ranging from short-lived projects to long-standing institutions. Among the most well-remembered are the YMCA Press in Paris, Posev and Grani in Germany, and Ardis Publishing, founded in the early 1970s—not by Russians, but by American literary scholars.Exiled Russian publishers not only printed the works of fellow émigré authors but also played a crucial role in tamizdat—smuggling manuscripts deemed ideologically unacceptable by the Soviet regime out of the USSR, publishing them abroad, and then covertly reintroducing them into the country for clandestine distribution.After Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, prompting the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Russians, it was only a matter of time before new émigré publishing houses emerged.In this conversation, we speak with Feliks Sandalov, co-founder and director of StraightForward, one of the newly established Russian publishing initiatives in exile, about his work and the evolving landscape of Russian publishing abroad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and insulting were the foundation of a kind of universal culture from which friendship, camaraderie and solidarity could emerge.Now, comedy is characterized by edgy humour and misplaced jokes that provoke personal and social anxiety, causing divisive cultural warfare in the media and among people. Our comedy is fraught with tension like never before, and so too is our social life. We often hear the claim that no one can take a joke anymore. But what if we really can’t take jokes anymore?Post-Comedy (Polity, 2025) argues that the spirit of comedy is the first step in the building of society, but that it has been lost in the era of divisive identity politics. Comedy flares up debates about censorship and cancellation, keeping us divided from one other. This goes against the true universalist spirit of comedy, which is becoming a thing of the past and must be recovered.Alfie Bown is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at Kings College London. His research focuses on psychoanalysis, digital media and popular culture.He has also worked as a journalist, writing for The Guardian, Paris Review, New Statesman, Tribune, and others. His books include The Playstation Dreamworld, Post-Memes, and Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships.He is the founder of Everyday Analysis which publishes pamphlets and essay collections with contemporary social and political issues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Alexandra Grey speaks with Karen McAuliffe about multilingual law-making.Karen is a Professor of Law and Language at Birmingham Law School in the UK. The conversation is about the important legal opinions delivered by the Advocates General at the European Court of Justice, and the effects of Advocates General drafting those opinions in their second or third language and with multilingual support staff.It builds on a chapter written by Karen McAuliffe, Liana Muntean & Virginia Mattioli in the book Researching the European Court of Justice, edited by Madsen, Nicola and Vauchez and published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. You can also follow Alexandra on LinkedIn and Karen on BlueSky @profkmca.bsky.social. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Empire of Culture: Neo-Victorian Narratives in the Global Creative Economy (SUNY Press, 2024) by Dr. Waiyee Loh brings together contemporary representations of Victorian Britain to reveal how the nation's imperial past inheres in the ways post-imperial subjects commodify and consume "culture" in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The globalization of English literature, along with British forms of dress, etiquette, and dining, in the nineteenth century presumed and produced the idea that British culture is a universal standard to which everyone should aspire.Examining neo-Victorian texts and practices from Britain, the United States, Japan, and Singapore—from A. S. Byatt's novel Possession and its Hollywood film adaptation to Japanese Lolita fashion and the Lady Victorian manga series—Dr. Loh argues that the British heritage industry thrives on the persistence of this idea. Yet this industry also competes and collaborates with the US and Japanese cultural industries, as they, too, engage with the legacy of British universalism to carve out their own empires in a global creative economy. Unique in its scope, Empire of Culture centers Britain's engagements with the US and East Asia to illuminate fresh axes of influence and appropriation, and further bring Victorian studies into contact with various sites of literary and cultural fandom.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her research examines race, video games, and the political economy of the video game industry. Srauy’s work appears in various academic journals including Social Media + Society, First Mondays, Games and Culture, and Television and New Media. She teaches courses on identity, race/racism, digital media production, and video game studies/production. Prior to academia, Srauy worked for over a decade in the high-tech industry. Her experience in that field includes municipal wireless networks, open-source technology, and streaming media systems. About the book: Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit (Routledge, 2024) offers a detailed and much needed examination of how systemic racism in the US shaped the culture, market logic, and production practices of video game developers from the 1970s until the 2010s.Offering historical analysis of the video game industries (console, PC, and indie) from a critical, political economic lens, this book specifically examines the history of how such practices created, enabled, and maintained racism through the imagined 'gamer.' The book explores how the cultural and economic landscape of the United States developed from the 1970s through the 2000s and explains how racist attitudes are reflected and maintained in the practices of video games production. These practices constitute a 'Vicious Circuit' that normalizes racism and the centrality of an imagined gamer identity. It also explores how the industry, from indie game developers to larger profit-driven companies, responded to changing attitudes in the 2010s, where racism and lack of diversity in games was frequently being noted. The book concludes by offering potential solutions to combat this 'Vicious Circuit'.A vital contribution to the study of video games that will be welcomed by students and scholars in the fields of media studies, cultural studies, game studies, critical race studies, and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Factual misinformation is spread in conflict zones around the world, often with dire consequences. But when is this misinformation actually believed, and when is it not? Seeing is Disbelieving: Why People Believe Misinformation in War, and When They Know Better (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Daniel Silverman examines the appeal and limits of dangerous misinformation in war, and is the go-to text for understanding false beliefs and their impact in modern armed conflict. Dr. Silverman extends the burgeoning study of factual misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news in social and political life into a crucial new domain, while providing a powerful new argument about the limits of misinformation in high-stakes situations. Rich evidence from the US drone campaign in Pakistan, the counterinsurgency against ISIL in Iraq, and the Syrian civil war provide the backdrop for practical lessons in promoting peace, fighting wars, managing conflict, and countering misinformation more effectively.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications