New Books in Popular Culture

Stories of world-ending catastrophe have featured prominently in film and television lately. Zombie apocalypses, climate disasters, alien invasions, global pandemics, and dystopian world orders fill our screens—typically with a singular figure or tenacious group tasked with saving or salvaging the world. In her new book, Apocalypse and Heroism in Popular Culture: Allegories of White Masculinity in Crisis (McFarland Press, 2022), Dr. Katherine E. Sugg asks, why are stories of End Times crisis so popular with audiences? And why is the hero so often a white man who overcomes personal struggles and major obstacles to lead humanity toward a restored future?This book examines the familiar trope of the hero and the recasting of contemporary anxieties in films and TV like The Walking Dead, Snowpiercer, Mad Max: Fury Road, and more. Some have familiar roots in Western cultural traditions, yet many question popular assumptions about heroes and heroism to tell new and fascinating stories about race, gender and society, and the power of individuals to change the world.Katherine E. Sugg is a professor of English and Latino & Puerto Rican studies at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut. She teaches and writes on world literatures, Latino and comparative American studies, and film and media. She has also written several journal articles and published a book entitled Gender and Allegory in Transamerican Fiction and Performance.Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. carrie-lynn.evans@lit.ulaval.ca @carrielynnland  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Rachael Hutchinson and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon's edited volume Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG (Lexington Books, 2022) examines the origins, boundaries, and transnational effects of the genre, addressing significant formal elements as well as narrative themes, character construction, and player involvement. Contributors from Japan, Europe, North America, and Australia employ a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze popular game series and individual titles, introducing an English-speaking audience to Japanese video game scholarship while also extending postcolonial and philosophical readings to the Japanese game text. In a three-pronged approach, the collection uses these analyses to look at genre, representation, and liminality, engaging with a multitude of concepts including stereotypes, intersectionality, and the political and social effects of JRPGs on players and industry conventions. Broadly, this collection considers JRPGs as networked systems, including evolved iterations of MMORPGs and card-collecting “social games” for mobile devices. Scholars of media studies, game studies, Asian studies, and Japanese culture will find this book particularly useful.Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

The three protagonists of Pasta, Pizza and Propaganda: A Political History of Italian Food TV (Intellect, 2022) are food, television and politics. These are the three main characters that interrelate, collaborate and fight behind the scenes, while in front of the camera the writers, intellectuals and celebrity chefs talk about, prepare or taste the best Italian dishes.In Pasta, Pizza and Propaganda, Dr. Francesco Buscemi develops a political history of Italian ‘good food’ on national television, and the central role of food in Italian culture. The focus is highly original and this is a unique interdisciplinary study at the intersection between food studies, media studies and politics.The book retraces the history of Italian food television from a political point of view: the early shows of the pioneers under strict Catholic control in the 1950s and 1960s, the left-wing political twist of the 1970s, the conservative riflusso or resurgence of the 1980s, the disputed Berlusconian era and the rise of the celebrity chefs, which, for better or for worse, makes Italy similar to the other western countries.The history of Italy since the mid-1950s is retold through the lenses of food television. This lively book demonstrates that cooking spaghetti in a TV studio is a political act, and tries to uncover how it is possible that, while watching on TV how to make pizza, we become citizens.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused 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/popular-culture

Image by image and hashtag by hashtag, Instagram has redefined the ways we relate to food. Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish edit contributions that explore the massively popular social media platform as a space for self-identification, influence, transformation, and resistance. Artists and journalists join a wide range of scholars to look at food’s connection to Instagram from vantage points as diverse as Hong Kong’s camera-centric foodie culture, the platform’s long history with feminist eateries, and the photography of Australia’s livestock producers. What emerges is a portrait of an arena where people do more than build identities and influence. Users negotiate cultural, social, and economic practices in a place that, for all its democratic potential, reinforces entrenched dynamics of power. Interdisciplinary in approach and transnational in scope, Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation (U Illinois Press, 2022) offers general readers and experts alike new perspectives on an important social media space and its impact on a fundamental area of our lives. The book has been dubbed by the experts in the field as “a veritable smorgasbord of perspectives on the all-pervasive and all-important nature of food on visual social media” (Tama Leaver, the co-author of Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures) that “shows how the digital app and the kind of food representations it supports contribute to the building identities and negotiating social and economic relationships” (Fabio Parasecoli, author of Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture). It is a path-blazing, inspirational work offering a vast array of theoretical perspectives, methodological tools, and conceptual innovations.Emily Contois is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tulsa. She holds a PhD in American studies from Brown University along with master's degrees in Gastronomy from Boston University and Public Health Nutrition from University of California, Berkeley. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture (2020). She serves on the board of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, H-Nutrition, and Advertising and Society Quarterly. As a public scholar, she has written for NBC News, Jezebel, and Nursing Clio and has appeared on CBS This Morning, BBC Ideas, and Ugly Delicious on Netflix. Learn more about her work at emilycontois.com or connect on social media (@emilycontois).Zenia Kish is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tulsa. She earned her PhD in American studies at New York University and was a post- doctoral fellow at Stanford University. Her work explores global digital media, sociotechnical imaginaries of food and agriculture, and philanthrocapitalism and has been published in journals including American Quarterly, Cultural Studies, Journal of Cultural Economy, and Environment and Planning A. She is a member of the Agri-Food Technology Research (AFTeR) Project and is associate editor for the Journal of Cultural Economy, as well as serving on the boards of the Journal of Environmental Media and Communication and Race. She is writing a book on philanthropic media cultures (@ZeniaKish).Amir Sayadabdi is a Lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

In Monstrous Youth: Transgressing the Boundaries of Childhood in the United States (Ohio State Press, 2022), Sara Austin traces the evolution of monstrosity as it relates to youth culture from the 1950s to the present day to spotlight the symbiotic relationship between monstrosity and the bodies and identities of children and adolescents. Examining comics, films, picture books, novels, television, toys and other material culture—including Monsters, Inc. and works by Mercer Mayer, Maurice Sendak, R. L. Stine, and Stephanie Meyer—Austin tracks how the metaphor of monstrosity excludes, engulfs, and narrates difference within children’s culture.Analyzing how cultural shifts have drastically changed our perceptions of both what it means to be a monster and what it means to be a child, Austin charts how the portrayal and consumption of monsters corresponds to changes in identity categories such as race, sexuality, gender, disability, and class. In demonstrating how monstrosity is leveraged in service of political and cultural movements, such as integration, abstinence-only education, and queer rights, Austin offers insight into how monster texts continue to reflect, interpret, and shape the social discourses of identity within children’s culture.Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

andré carrington talks about the origins of contemporary fandoms, race and gender as its determinants, and its emancipatory potential in the face of cooption by big media conglomerates. Besides andrés book Speculative Blackness, references are made, among other things, to the work of Carolyn Dinshaw, and the popular fandoms of Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Star Trek.andré carrington is a scholar of race, gender, and genre in Black and American cultural production, and author of Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction. He is Associate Professor of English at the University of California-Riverside. carrington’s writing appears in journals (American Literature, Souls, and Lateral), books (After Queer Studies: Literature, Theory, and Sexuality in the 21st Century, The Blacker the Ink), and blogs (Black Perspectives). With Abigail De Kosnik, he co-edited a special issue of Transformative Works & Cultures journal on Fans of Color/Fandoms of Color.Image: “Girl Reading Mickey Mouse and the Submarine Pirates Comic Book” by Charles “Teenie” Harris, in Pittsburgh, 1947Music used in promotional material: ‘Funky Garden’ by Ketsa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

John and Elizabeth look back at Recall This Book’s terrific 2019 conversation with Zadie Smith , so you may want to listen to that again before proceeding Elizabeth and John try their best to unpack Zadie Smith’s take on sincerity, authenticity and human sacredness; the “golden ticket” dirty secret behind our hypocritical academic meritocracy; surveillance capitalism as the “biggest capital grab of human experience in history;” and her genealogy of the novel. If we had to sum the day up with a few adjectives: funny, provocative, resplendent, chill, generous, cantankerous.Discussed in this episode: Tony Judt, Postwar Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy Nicholas Lehmann, The Big Test Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge Doris Lessing The Fifth Child Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means Stephen McCauley (with JP on RTB) Barbara Pym and the Comic Novel Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black (and others…) Joseph O’Neill, Netherland J. P. Toussaint, The Bathroom Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader, A Room of One’s Own, “Moments of Being” Philip Roth, The Counterlife, Exit Ghost Listen to the episode here:You can read the transcript here:RTB 15x Ferry and Plotz on ZSElizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Email: ferry@brandeis.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford UP, 2022) investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Over the 1970s and 1980s, cassettes became a ubiquitous presence in Egyptian homes and stores. Audiocassette technology gave an opening to ordinary individuals, from singers to smugglers, to challenge state-controlled Egyptian media. Enabling an unprecedented number of people to participate in the creation of culture and circulation of content, cassette players and tapes soon informed broader cultural, political, and economic developments and defined "modern" Egyptian households.Drawing on a wide array of audio, visual, and textual sources that exist outside the Egyptian National Archives, Andrew Simon provides a new entry point into understanding everyday life and culture. Cassettes and cassette players, he demonstrates, did not simply join other twentieth century mass media, like records and radio; they were the media of the masses. Comprised of little more than magnetic reels in plastic cases, cassettes empowered cultural consumers to become cultural producers long before the advent of the Internet. Positioned at the productive crossroads of social history, cultural anthropology, and media and sound studies, Media of the Masses ultimately shows how the most ordinary things may yield the most surprising insights.Avery Weinman is a PhD student in History at the University of California, Los Angeles. She researches Jewish history in the modern Middle East and North Africa, with emphasis on Sephardi and Mizrahi radicals in British Mandatory Palestine. She can be reached at averyweinman@ucla.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

In 1975, design engineer Dave Nutting completed work on a new arcade machine. A version of Taito's Western Gun, a recent Japanese arcade machine, Nutting's Gun Fight depicted a classic showdown between gunfighters. Rich in Western folklore, the game seemed perfect for the American market; players easily adapted to the new technology, becoming pistol-wielding pixel cowboys. One of the first successful early arcade titles, Gun Fight helped introduce an entire nation to video-gaming and sold more than 8,000 units.In Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019), John Wills examines how video games co-opt national landscapes, livelihoods, and legends. Arguing that video games toy with Americans' mass cultural and historical understanding, Wills show how games reprogram the American experience as a simulated reality. Blockbuster games such as Civilization, Call of Duty, and Red Dead Redemption repackage the past, refashioning history into novel and immersive digital states of America. Controversial titles such as Custer's Revenge and 08.46 recode past tragedies. Meanwhile, online worlds such as Second Life cater to a desire to inhabit alternate versions of America, while Paperboy and The Sims transform the mundane tasks of everyday suburbia into fun and addictive challenges.Working with a range of popular and influential games, from Pong, Civilization, and The Oregon Trail to Grand Theft Auto, Silent Hill, and Fortnite, Wills critically explores these gamic depictions of America. Touching on organized crime, nuclear fallout, environmental degradation, and the War on Terror, Wills uncovers a world where players casually massacre Native Americans and Cold War soldiers alike, a world where neo-colonialism, naive patriotism, disassociated violence, and racial conflict abound, and a world where the boundaries of fantasy and reality are increasingly blurred. Ultimately, Gamer Nation reveals not only how video games are a key aspect of contemporary American culture, but also how games affect how people relate to America itself.Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design at the IU International University of Applied Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, focusing on continuities and disruptions within communities and practices of design. Designing Modern Japan explores design in the unfolding contexts of modernization, empire and war, defeat and reconstruction, postwar economic acceleration, and beyond. Throughout, Teasley is sensitive to issues of gender and class within the communities of design she studies. The book combines the history of design with social, economic, and geopolitical history, placing design and its material objects carefully in the larger currents of modern and contemporary Japan. Designing Modern Japan is a history of both the people who shaped Japanese design and the designs that were integral to life in modern Japan.Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture