New Books in Performing Arts
Interviews with scholars of the performing arts about their new books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts
Show episodes
Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, "Tracks on the Trail: Popular Music, Race, and the US Presidency" (U Michigan Press, 2023)
From Bill Clinton playing his saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show to Barack Obama referencing Jay-Z's song "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," politicians have used music not only to construct their personal presidential identities but to create the broader identity of the American presidency. Through music, candidates can appear
Albert Brooks: Interviews (UP of Mississippi, 2024) brings together fourteen profiles of and conversations with Brooks (b. 1947), in which he contemplates, expounds upon, and hilariously jokes about the connections between his show business upbringing, an ambivalence about the film industry, the nature of fame and succ
Eve Golden, "Strictly Dynamite: The Sensational Life of Lupe Velez" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)
Before Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria, and Penelope Cruz, there was Lupe Velez―one of the first Latin-American stars to sweep past the xenophobia of old Hollywood and pave the way for future icons from around the world. Her career began in the silent era, when her beauty was enough to make it onto the silver screen, but wit
Miriam Piilonen, "Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human" (Oxford UP, 2024)
What did historical evolutionists such as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer have to say about music? What role did music play in their evolutionary theories? What were the values and limits of these evolutionist turns of thought, and in what ways have they endured in present-day music research? Theorizing Music Evolu
From the theatre mask and masquerade to the masked criminal and the rise of facial recognition software, masks have long performed as an instrument for the protection and concealment of identity. Even as they conceal and protect, masks – as faces – are an extension of the self. At the same time, they are a part of mate
Ellie Tomsett, "Stand-up Comedy and Contemporary Feminisms: Sexism, Stereotypes and Structural Inequalities" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
How is comedy hostile to women? In Stand-up Comedy and Contemporary Feminisms: Sexism, Stereotypes and Structural Inequalities (Bloomsbury, 2023), Ellie Tomsett, a Senior Lecturer in media and film at Birmingham City University, explores the reality of a comedy industry that, despite many changes, still has a sexism pr