Episodes

  • 86 Dana Stevens on Buster Keaton (JP EF)
    Aug 4 2022
    Dana Stevens joins Elizabeth and John to discuss Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema and the Invention of the Twentieth Century. Her fantastic new book serves as occasion to revel in the work and working world of Buster Keaton, that "solemn, beautiful, perpetually airborne man." Although packed with fascinating tidbits from Keaton's life, Camera Man is much more than just a biography. It performs its own airborne magic, lightly traversing topics like the crackdown on the use of children in vaudeville, the fluidity of roles before and behind the camera in early Hollywood and the doors that were briefly (ever so briefly) opened for female directors. Among other treats, Dana unpacks one of Keaton's early great "two-reelers" One Week ( a spoof of brisk upbeat industrial films) and his parodic "burlesques" e.g. of Lillian Gish. People, Films, Books and Ideas in the conversation include: Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle: got Keaton his start in early films like Butcher Boy, reportedly filmed the day Keaton first stepped onto a set. He said "Buster lived inside the camera." "Cinema of Attractions." a phrase coined by film historian Tom Gunning to describe the way the early years of cinema (1895 to 1913, more or less) achieved success by way of gags, stunts, special effects and other dazzling technological innovations--rather than plot or character development,. John and Dana rave about Keaton's last great film (age 33!), The Cameraman (1928) and deprecate the later silents (with a silent caveat for the pancake scene Grand Slam Opera). Mabel Normand: Arbuckle's longtime collaborator and briefly a rising director--Charlie Chaplin kneecapped her at a crucial moment in her career. Dana singles out for special praise Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916) starring Luke, the first canine movie star. Singing in the Rain as a MGM-friendly myth-making explanation for Clara Bow's eclipse (and the famous vocal failure moment: "I can't stand 'im") Steamboat Bill Jr. ( 1928, Buster Keaton feature) "Keaton's most mature movie" says Dana. Read the transcript here. Elizabeth 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
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  • Lillian Faderman, "Woman: The American History of an Idea" (Yale UP, 2022)
    Apr 26 2022
    Lillian Faderman is professor emerita at California State University, Fresno. An award-winning author Dr Faderman, widely known as the mother of lesbian history, has authored many books on women, gender and sexuality. In her new release entitled Woman: The American History of an Idea (Yale University Press, 2022). Faderman examines what it means to be a “woman” in America? She traces the evolution of the meaning from Puritan ideas of God’s plan for women to the sexual revolution of the 1960s and its reversals to the impact of such recent events as #metoo, the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the election of Kamala Harris as vice president, and the transgender movement. This long 400-year history chronicles conflicts, retreats, defeats, and hard-won victories in both the private and the public sectors and shines a light on the often-overlooked battles of enslaved women and women leaders in tribal nations. Noting that every attempt to cement a particular definition of “woman” has met resistance, Faderman shows that successful challenges to the status quo are often short-lived. The idea of womanhood in America continues to be contested. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her current writing project is on the intellectual history of women and the origins of feminism seen through the emblematic life and work of Simone de Beauvoir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
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  • Robin Globus Veldman, "The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why Evangelical Christians Oppose Action on Climate Change" (U California Press, 2019)
    Sep 17 2021
    Why are white evangelicals the most skeptical major religious group in America regarding climate change? Previous scholarship has pointed to cognitive factors such as conservative politics, anti-science attitudes, aversion to big government, and theology. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, Robin Veldman's book The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why Evangelical Christians Oppose Action on Climate Change (U California Press, 2019) reveals the extent to which climate skepticism and anti-environmentalism have in fact become embedded in the social world of many conservative evangelicals. Rejecting the common assumption that evangelicals’ skepticism is simply a side effect of political or theological conservatism, the book further shows that between 2006 and 2015, leaders and pundits associated with the Christian Right widely promoted skepticism as the biblical position on climate change. The Gospel of Climate Skepticism offers a compelling portrait of how during a critical period of recent history, political and religious interests intersected to prevent evangelicals from offering a unified voice in support of legislative action to address climate change. Brady McCartney is a Ph.D. student and scholar of religion, Indigenous studies, and environmental history at the University of Florida.Email: Brady.McCartney@UFL.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
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  • Josephine Ensign, "Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
    Aug 30 2021
    Home to over 730,000 people, with close to four million people living in the metropolitan area, Seattle has the third-highest homeless population in the United States. In 2018, an estimated 8,600 homeless people lived in the city, a figure that does not include the significant number of "hidden" homeless people doubled up with friends or living in and out of cheap hotels. In Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021), Josephine Ensign digs through layers of Seattle history—past its leaders and prominent citizens, respectable or not—to reveal the stories of overlooked and long-silenced people who live on the margins of society. Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
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  • David Arditi, "Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
    Jun 16 2021
    How does the record industry work? In Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), David Arditi, Associate Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at University of Texas at Arlington, analyses the ideology of getting signed and getting a record contract to show the alienating and exploitative effects of the record industry on musicians and the making of music. The book blends ethnographic fieldwork with critical theoretical analysis, looking at a range of issues in music, from the ‘strained solidarity’ of being in a band, the negative impact of competition and competitiveness in the music industry and in society, to longstanding issues about copyright. The book is essential reading across arts, humanities and the social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in music today. Dave O'Brien is Chancellor's Fellow, Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Edinburgh's College of Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
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  • Jodi Rios, "Black Lives and Spatial Matters: Policing Blackness and Practicing Freedom in Suburban St. Louis" (Cornell UP, 2020)
    Jan 5 2021
    In Black Lives and Spatial Matters: Policing Blackness and Practicing Freedom in Suburban St. Louis (Cornell University Press, 2020), Dr. Jodi Rios examines relationships between blackness, space, and racism, in the northern suburbs of St. Louis. She argues that the “double bind of living as Black in North St. Louis County means that Black residents both suffer from, and pay for, the loss of economic and political viability that occurs when they simply occupy space” (1). Rios theorizes “Blackness-as-risk” as foundational to the historical and contemporary construction of metropolitan space. She documents the ways in which Black residents in the north St. Louis suburbs are subject to excessive ordinances and constant policing. Yet, these residents also resist such constraints. After the murder of Michael Brown in August 2014, Black Lives Matter protests erupted throughout St. Louis as well as across the country. Through the lens of such protests, Rios theorizes “Blackness-as-freedom” as “the unique capacity of blackness to embody freedom in the face of death and to imagine other worlds, other futures” (5). Black Lives and Spatial Matters is a transdisciplinary work that draws from history, ethnography, geography, as well as architecture and design, to show how anti-blackness is produced and contested when Black people occupy space. Jodi Rios is a scholar, designer, and educator whose work is located at the intersection of physical, social, and political space. Reighan Gillam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
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  • Robert Fieseler, "Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation" (Liveright, 2018)
    Oct 30 2020
    An essential work of American civil rights history, Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation (Liveright, 2018) mesmerizingly reconstructs the 1973 fire that devastated New Orleans’ subterranean gay community. Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue- collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community. The aftermath was no less traumatic—families ashamed to claim loved ones, the Catholic Church refusing proper burial rights, the city impervious to the survivors’ needs—revealing a world of toxic prejudice that thrived well past Stonewall. Yet the impassioned activism that followed proved essential to the emergence of a fledgling gay movement. Tinderbox restores honor to a forgotten generation of civil-rights martyrs. Robert W. Fieseler is the 2019 National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association "Journalist of the Year" and the acclaimed debut author of Tinderbox-- winner of the Edgar Award and the Louisiana Literary Award, shortlisted for the Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Queer literary icon Andrew Holleran reviewed Tinderbox as "far more than just a history of gay rights," and Michael Cunningham praised it as "essential reading at any time." Fieseler graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School and is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. Born and raised in Chicago, Fieseler now lives with his husband and dog in New Orleans. Morris Ardoin is the author of Stone Motel - Memoirs of a Cajun Boy, published in April 2020 by the University Press of Mississippi. His blog, "Parenthetically Speaking," about the food and culture of Louisiana and his life as a New Yorker, can be found at morrisardoin.com.  John Marszalek III is author of Coming Out of the Magnolia Closet: Same-Sex Couples in Mississippi (2020, University Press of Mississippi). He is clinical faculty of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Southern New Hampshire University. Website: Johnmarszalek3.com Twitter: @marsjf3 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
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  • Nicole Maurantonio, "Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century" (UP of Kansas, 2019)
    Jul 3 2020
    In a time of contentious debate over Confederate monuments, Nicole Maurantonio (Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication studies and American Studies at the University of Richmond) provides an intriguing look into how revisionist ideas of the Confederacy have seeped into mainstream culture. Based in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, she is well-positioned to comment on the neo-Confederate groups in the South and around the country. Their goal, she recognizes, is to separate the legacy of slavery and racism that is so deeply intertwined with Confederate symbols and isolate an idyllic portrayal of “the South.” These groups proudly wave Confederate battle flags, put up monuments to Confederate generals, and even sell Confederate cookbooks. Together, these attempts to embrace and revise the history of the Confederacy create Confederate Exceptionalism. Maurantonio’s interdisciplinary book treats the state of Virginia as a confederate museum to be analyzed. The book combines carefully selected language and wide-ranging case studies of Confederate Exceptionalism including the infamous Monument Avenue in Richmond, songs and anthems, cookbooks, the exhibit of Stonewall Jackson’s stuffed horse, the myth of Black confederate soldiers, and the manipulation of social media to trivialize counter-protesters in the #Tarpwars after Charlottesville. The podcast allows Maurantonio to connect the thesis to protesters toppling the statue of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy on Monument Row in June 2020 -- and offer a fascinating analysis of the decision not to clean graffiti and how this empowers members of the community to use the monuments to oppose white supremacy, Maurantonio defines Confederate Exceptionalism as a mix of Lost Cause ideology and American Exceptionalism, two ideas with deep roots in the South and the broader United States. The former constitutes the attempts of Southerners to twist the narrative of the Civil War, painting the Confederates as noble heroes, fighting for the protection of states’ rights and their way of life. This line of thinking also blames the North and abolitionists for sectional tensions before the war, and perhaps most dangerously, perpetuates the “loyal slave” cliché, representing enslaved people as willing participants in their own bondage. American exceptionalism, present at the founding of the United States, presents the United States as superior to any other nation or civilization. Gaining steam as the U.S. became a global superpower in the early 20th century, the concept ignores the negative aspects of the nation, pointing to liberalism, diversity, and freedom, as well as military might, to illustrate greatness. When the two concepts are merged by neo-Confederate groups, the amalgamation of Southern superiority and rewritten history undergird Confederate Exceptionalism. Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century (University Press of Kansas, 2019) explores the impacts and motivations of its namesake through conversations with neo-Confederates and investigations into the institutions that allow Confederate exceptionalism to exist and prosper in a world where its roots are so widely denounced. Benjamin Warren assisted with this podcast. Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (August 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
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