New Books in Communications

Despite the recent booms in the study of the Middle East and North Africa, technology studies still remain scarce: one of the recent attempts to fill the void is Andrea L. Stanton‘s ‘This is Jerusalem Calling’: State Radio in Mandate Palestine (University of Texas Press, 2013). She weaves together different narratives to tell the story of the Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS), launched in 1936 as an attempt by the mandate government to cater to different audiences, shaping middle class culture in the mandate territory in the process. The PBS reflected the concept of the dual commitment the British had to both the Arab and Jewish populations of the Mandate, in addition to demonstrating how the populations engaged with radio as an emerging form of media. NA Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Since its infancy, television has played an important role in shaping U.S. values and the American sense of self. Social activists recognized this power immediately and, consequently, set about trying to influence television’s portrayal of those values by securing access to and a voice in the medium. Allison Perlman‘s Public Interests: Media Advocacy and Struggles Over U.S. Television (Rutgers University Press, 2016) examines some these efforts, including those among African Americans, women, and parents among others, between the 1940s and the early 2000s. Perlman, an associate professor of film and media students and history at the University of California, Irvine, thus, shows that media law and regulation was an important site of debate and activism. Social activists recognized television’s power and that ensuring their own views, voices, and identities were represented on the screen could be influential in promoting their cause. Both conservative and liberal activists worked hard to use existing laws to shape television ownership and programing. In the process, activists also worked to shape the definition of the public and weighed in on questions surrounding how to define and promote the “public interest,” as required by law. By the 1980s, deregulation reshaped the landscape, but did not end the importance of the arena for activists. In this episode of New Books in History, Perlman discusses Public Interests and this history of media advocacy. She tells listeners about some of these social activists’ campaigns to influence FCC policies nationally as well as about more localized efforts to shape television programing. She also explains why these battles were important in shaping the broadcasting environment even if they did not always achieve their stated goal. She discusses the importance of deregulation in later media regulation advocacy. Perlman makes clear that a simple declension story is inaccurate even in this later period and discusses these battles’ continued relevance today. Christine Lamberson is an Assistant Professor of History at Angelo State University. Her research and teaching focuses on 20th century U.S. political and cultural history. She’s currently working on a book manuscript about the role of violence in shaping U.S. political culture in the 1960s and 1970s. She can be reached at clamberson@angelo.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

How do women experience and participate in Metal? This question forms the core of Gender, Metal and the Media: Women Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), the new book from Rosemary Lucy Hill, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Leeds. Hill’s book is both empirically detailed, drawing on analysis of Metal media, and theoretically rich, engaging with a range of work on music and gender. The book outlines the imagined community of Metal, thinking through the myths underpinning that community. By exploring myths of equality and authenticity, along with the problematic tropes of “warriors” and “groupies,” the analysis makes clear the gendered tensions of Metal fandom.The book concludes with some thoughts on how to build a new cultural vision for Metal, which will realize the promise of egalitarianism offered in much of the community and in the music. It will be essential reading across sociology, music, and media studies, as well as for all Metalheads too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Noel Brown is a film and television scholar at Liverpool Hope University. His research has focused on Hollywood and British cinema (classical and contemporary), family entertainment, children’s culture and animation. His first three books were published by I.B. Tauris and include, The Hollywood Family Film: from Shirley Temple to Harry Potter, Family Films in Global Cinema: The World Beyond Disney, and British Children’s Cinema: from The Thief of Bagdad to Wallace and Gromit. Now his newest, The Children’s Film: Genre, Nation and Narrative (Wallflower Press, 2017) looks at children’s film to explore its cultural and social impact, and it shows the evolution of a beloved genre that has resonated across ages and generations. The Children’s Film is part of the Short Cuts Series published by Wallflower Press, an imprint of Columbia University Press. Information on Noel Brown’s work is available at http://lhu.academia.edu/NoelBrown. Susan Raab is president of Raab Associates, an internationally recognized agency that specializes in marketing literature, products and initiatives that help improve the lives of young people. Clients have includedNational Geographic, Scholastic, the International Board on Books for Young People, and bestselling authors and illustrators. Susan is marketing advisor for the Society of Children’sBook Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). She’salso a journalist reporting on publishing, education and human rights. Her work as a broadcast correspondent has been hosted by the University of Connecticut, and by the University of Florida’s Recess Radio, a program syndicated to 500 public radio stations. Her many interviews, including with Art Spiegelman, Jon Scieszka, Norton Juster, Laurie Halse Anderson and many others talking about art and literature can be heard here. Follow Susan at: https://twitter.com/sraab18 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Two professors from Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada have published a book about how American popular culture reinforces militarism in the United States. In Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror (Lexington Books, 2010) Geoff Martin and Erin Steuter argue that popular songs, Hollywood movies, professional sports, TV news and even children’s toys help generate public support for the use of military force to solve political problems such as international terrorism. At the same time, they also argue that other elements of popular culture such as The Daily Show, the Colbert Report and The Simpsons, for example, actively resist militarism with pointed political comedy and satire. In this New Books Network interview, Steuter and Martin say their book was inspired in part by the ideas of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who preached against the War in Vietnam. “We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation,” King declared in a speech delivered a year before he was assassinated in 1968. Professors Steuter and Martin argue that King’s opposition to militarism is as relevant today during the seemingly endless post 9/11 War on Terror, as it was then. Erin Steuter teaches sociology at Mount Allison, in Sackville, New Brunswick while her partner, Geoff Martin is a professor of political science there. Bruce Wark is a freelance journalist and retired journalism professor based in the Sackville, New Brunswick. Laura Landon is a librarian at Mount Allison University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

What is life like in the aspirational economy?In (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media and Aspirational Work (Yale University Press, 2017) Brooke Erin Duffy, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University, explores the working life of bloggers, social media stars, and online influencers (not) making a living in and around the fashion industry. The core of the book is the idea of aspirational labour, which captures the demands of trying to get in and get on in this precarious form of work. Aspirational labour is theorised in conjunction with gender and the broader inequalities of production and consumption in consumer culture. The book then uses this frame to explore the big winners of the social media economy, alongside detailing the hidden costs to being authentic and effortless online, as well as reflecting on the impact of aspirational labour on many other areas of economy and society. The book is packed with rich and detailed interview data, and is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand contemporary consumer culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Jennifer Fleeger‘s Mismatched Women: The Siren’s Song Through the Machine (Oxford University Press, 2014) tells the story of women in film and their representation as aberrations, but also as moments of emancipation and agency. Fleeger’s book discusses exceptional voices such as Kate Smith, known as the First Lady of Radio; Deanna Durbin, whose soprano voice allegedly saved Universal Studios from bankruptcy, Susan Boyle the woman who shocked Britain’s Got Talent jury and public to the point of tears, amongst many others. Fleeger’s approach broadens the traditionally cinematic context of feminist psychoanalytic film theory to account for literary, animated, televisual, and virtual influences. All the songs played in this episode are available on the books companion website, available here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

How do metrics rule the social world? In Metric Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) David Beer, Reader in Sociology at the University of York, outlines the rise of the metric and the role of metrics in shaping everyday life. The book outlines the core theoretical concepts, such as neo-liberalism, bio-power, and bio-politics, alongside the characteristics themes of metric power, including practices of making (in)visible, the social life of methods and data, and questions of agency. These theoretical discussions are set against the broad backdrop of the rise of big data, corporate power, social media, and algorithm based decision making. Metric Power is located within the study of broader social inequalities, meaning the book makes important reading for anyone concerned with how our daily experiences of technologies, organisations, and social institutions, are shaped, unequally, by the power of metrics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Before Transgender actors entered popular culture, and before the “T” was included in LGBT, Transgender activism was a small and marginalized movement. However, though courage and perseverance, Transgender rights began to enter the public consciousness. Drawing on her own life story, Riki Wilchin’s newest book TRANS/gressive: How Transgender Activists took on Gay Rights, Feminism, the Media & Congress…and Won! (Riverdale Avenue Books, 2017) traces the origins of the Transgender movement. From the backwoods of rural Michigan to the nation’s capital, the movement challenged not only conservative politicians and worldviews but also challenged the boundaries of gender, sex, and sexuality within more progressive movements. How do Trans issues and concerns intersect with notions of masculinity and femininity? What was the relationship between the Trans movement and the Gay movement? How do movements transcend the local and become national? Wilchins offers answers to these (and many more) questions within the pages of TRANS/gressive. In addition to TRANS/gressive, Wilchins is also author to three other books on topics of gender and sexuality: Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion & the End of Gender, Queer Theory/Gender Theory: An Instant Primer, and Voice from Beyond the Sexual Binary. Wilchins’ works has been featured in many periodicals, and Riki has held many trainings on gender norms and nonconformity for audiences that include the White House, Centers for Disease Control, and the office on Women’s Health. Continuing her activism as well as her authorship, Wilchins expects another forthcoming book in the near future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

In her new book, Playboy Laughs: The Comedy, Comedians, and Cartoons of Playboy (Beaufort Books, 2017), Patty Farmer examines the relationship between Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire and some of the most influential comedians and cartoonists of the past 50 years. Farmer explores the ways in which the Playboy Clubs and Resorts of the 1960s and 1970s established spaces for comedians to hone their acts, get paid, and started the careers for many comedians and musicians. She looks at the savvy business decisions of Hefner that led to clubs which have influenced popular culture and society in a variety of ways. Farmer describes how establishing these clubs challenged racial barriers as desegregated comedy clubs in the 1960s as well as gender barriers, giving a performance space to many rising female comedians such as Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers. Farmer also looks at the role Playboy magazine played in launching the careers of many cartoonists such as Shel Silverstein and Al Jaffe and the meticulous attention to detail that Hefner paid to all cartoons and artists used throughout the magazine. Using interviews and oral histories, Farmer presents inside experiences from comedians and cartoonists who owe much of their career to Playboy magazine and Playboy Clubs. Rebekah Buchanan is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines the role of narrative–both analog and digital–in people’s lives. She is interested in how personal narratives produced in alternative spaces create sites that challenge traditionally accepted public narratives. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. You can find more about her on her website, follow her on Twitter @rj_buchananor email her at rj-buchanan@wiu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications