New Books in Film

Jaksot

• Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 19.07.2026 45min

  In Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001 (Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing scholarship, she traces the emergence of the New Art Practice of the late 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the pivotal role of Belgrade’s Student Cultural Centre, where women were instrumental in forging a progressive artistic and curatorial vision. Through insightful examinations of performance art, video art, and the development of feminist thought in Yugoslavia, Foerschner reveals how the region carved out a distinctive place within the international postwar avant-garde. Situating Yugoslav feminism in dialogue with Western and neighbouring contexts, she sheds new light on the complex intersections of art, politics, and social change. By exploring artistic responses to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the enduring political dimensions of cultural production, this book invites readers to reconsider the legacies of activist art and their resonance in our present time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Adam Geczy, "Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 15.07.2026 34min

  Glasses are among the oldest and most commonplace prosthetics we have invented. But what does it mean to wear glasses? There is more to the answer than correcting vision. Glasses alter, enhance, and shield the way that we view the world, and the way the world sees us. Everyone has encounters with glasses, passively or actively, from reading glasses to sunglasses. At times they are the main identifiers in a face (think John Lennon), and they signify extremes from nerdy and brainy to cool and sleazy. They are alternately the most mundane of things on our bodies and potentially the most glamorous. In this edition of the Object Lessons series, Glasses (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Adam Geczy explores this most pervasive and accessible accessory and shows that it is both a conduit to and a barrier between ourselves and the world outside. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Mike F. Alvarez, Warren J. Bareiss, and Jolane Flanigan eds., "Suicide in Popular Media and Culture: Studies in Framing a Social Catastrophe" (Bristol University Press, 2026) 15.07.2026 1t 17min

  NB: This episode contains a discussion of suicide and may not be appropriate for all listeners. If you are thinking about hurting yourself, help is always available at 988 in the United States. Suicide in Popular Media and Culture: Studies in Framing a Social Catastrophe (Bristol University Press, 2026) brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine how suicide is mythologized, politicized, and challenged across film, TV, young adult literature, digital platforms, online communities, and more. From news coverage of celebrity suicide to social media interventions with at-risk youth, this wide-ranging collection explores suicide’s intersections with class, gender, chronic illness, and cultural identity. The book is co-edited by Mike F. Alvarez (Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire), Warren J. Bareiss (Professor of Communication at the University of South Carolina Upstate), and Jolane Flanigan (Professor of Communication Studies at Rocky Mountain College and a licensed mental health counselor). Some Crisis Resources *Note: some of these may utilize emergency services or law enforcement to conduct wellness/welfare checks or active rescues. Ask if these are possibilities at any point during your conversation. 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Website Dial 988 The Trevor Project Website Provides support for LGBTQ+ youth facing crisis 1-866-488-7386 Text: 678678 Chat: Here Crisis Text Line Text HOME to 741-741 Trans Lifeline 1-877-565-8860 (U.S.) 1-877-330-6366 (Canada) Warmline.org Website Contains links to warmlines in every state Provides peer support Find a Helpline Website For those not in the U.S. Search for links to crisis centers worldwide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Soraya Murray, "Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination" (MIT Press, 2026) 14.07.2026 1t 6min

  Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech, military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is about the changing imagination of technology within an American context and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of modern life. Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central role. Murray’s first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin’s Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Krzysztof Rowiński, "Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film" (Routledge, 2026) 07.07.2026 45min

  Today’s guest, Krzysztof Rowiński, is the author of Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film (Routledge, 2026). This book focuses on the concept of non- redemptive failure, a type of failure that is not part of a larger narrative of success or narrative redemption, with attention to how the concept functions between literature, critical theory, and other fields. Examining literature and film from mid- twentieth- century Poland, Italy, and the United States, it traces productive effects of failure which cannot survive into the future, yet have an important, transformative impact in the moment in which they occur. The book engages with the work of John Williams, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Bruno Jasieński, proposing a theory of failure at the intersection of literary study, performance theory, and political thought. In discussing these examples, the book examines the place of failure in the broader context of modern and contemporary US American, Italian, and Polish literary and cultural traditions. Because of its interdisciplinary potential, this study might appeal to readers in art history, philosophy, political theory, and other fields within the humanities and social sciences. Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption offers a framework that could not only spotlight the contribution of literary studies to the topic, in the form of narrative analysis but also become part of the theoretical apparatus for further research in these fields. Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Jonathan L. Friedmann, "Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025) 04.07.2026 1t 11min

  Only a few Westerns contain explicitly Jewish stories or themes, and very rarely do Old West tales involve identifiably Jewish characters. Yet Jewish contributors have shaped the Western—once Hollywood's most popular genre—ever since the silent era, both onscreen and offscreen, and some filmmakers have sought to infuse the genre with a distinctly Jewish sensibility. In Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025), Friedmann engages with larger themes of Jewish identity in popular film, including depictions of race, ethnicity, and foreignness. He also identifies similar concerns within the invention and creation of the imaginary West writ large in American culture. The juxtapositions prove to be both unexpected and intuitively understandable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Grizzly Man 22.06.2026 25min

  Tennyson called nature “red in tooth and claw,” but that warning didn’t keep Timothy Treadwell from living among the grizzlies of Alaska for thirteen summers–until one of them killed him and his girlfriend. Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man tells Treadwell’s story and raises the issues of what happens when we ascribe human motives and characteristics to animals and the ways in which we all attempt to stake out our own territory in an indifferent world. Incredible bumper music by John Deley. Herzog’s most recent book The Future of Truth (2025) is a series of essays about what constitutes truth and the threats truth faces in our age of AI and deepfakes. Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Blue Jasmine 15.06.2026 22min

  Woody Allen has called A Streetcar Named Desire the most well-directed film ever made and its influence on Blue Jasmine (2013) is unmistakable. Both concern a woman whose fantasy life and self-deception break down and both feature incredible performances by the lead actress: in Streetcar, it’s Vivien Leigh and here it’s Cate Blanchett. And if Streetcar is a high point of Eliza Kazan’s filmography, Blue Jasmine is surely one of Allen’s and perhaps the best of the subgenre Woody Allen Movies Without The Woody Allen Character. Incredible bumper music by John Deley. Blue Jasmine is Allen’s 44th film; his memoir, Apropos of Nothing, details how he became a writer and director of fifty films. Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025) 09.06.2026 45min

  How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment. Drawing on sound studies and performance theory, scholar Shikha Jhingan explores the discursive nature of the female playback voice in Bombay film songs in The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology (Wayne State UP, 2025). Mapping the production, circulation, and reception of the voices of singing stars—notably Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle—Jhingan situates the singing voice as a cinematic object with limitless possibilities of distribution and dispersal. She employs the perspectives of a diverse range of listeners across a vast media landscape to illustrate how the affective charge of the female playback voice, combined with developments in audio technology, has led to a gradual expansion of opportunities for women in film, popular music, and media and audio production. With nuanced exploration of the way the human voice becomes intertwined with devices such as the microphone, radio, cassettes, and digital technologies, Jhingan argues for the sonic excess of the female voice beyond the narrative and visual. The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema is an authoritative addition to the field of sound studies with implications for gender studies, performance studies, and cinema studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Allyson Nadia Field, "Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History" (U California Press, 2026) 06.06.2026 48min

  In 1898, vaudeville actors Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown joyously embraced in a short silent film titled Something Good—Negro Kiss. The first known film to portray African American affection, it was lost for over a century until its rediscovery inspired contemporary audiences with a powerful and enduring depiction of Black love. More than a missing piece in an untold history of Black cinematic performance, Something Good—and the magnetism of Suttle and Brown—attests to the power of Black performance on stage and screen from the nineteenth century to today. In Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History (University of California Press, 2026), Allyson Nadia Field tells the story of Something Good and recovers the forgotten yet fascinating lives of its performers and their world. Drawing a vivid picture from sparse historical records, Acts of Love examines popular culture's negotiation of blackness to reconsider the intersections of minstrelsy, vaudeville, and cinema in ragtime America. This book not only presents the story of Something Good, its performers, and the drama of its rediscovery; it shows how the rediscovery of this short early film changes our understanding of American film history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Mackenzi Lee, "Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos" (Mattel, 2026) 01.06.2026 43min

  Mackenzi Lee's Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos (Mattel, 2026) is a young adult tie-in for the Masters of the Universe (2026) film.  A FALLEN KINGDOMFour years after Skeletor decimated the kingdom of Eternos, Teela and the scattered refugees of Eternia survive by never staying in one place for long. When a brutal storm of acidic rain deep within the Evergreen Forest leaves their camp ravaged and hope at its thinnest, some, like Teela’s friend Locke, begin to plan for a future beyond Eternia. But Teela knows her father Duncan, the once-mighty Man-At-Arms, won’t survive leaving the land he swore to protect.A FORBIDDEN ALLIANCEDesperate to save her people, Teela ventures to Darksmoke to bargain with the ancient dragon Granamyr. He bestows upon her a vial filled with a mysterious, powerful elixir—and no instructions on its use. Enter Evil-Lyn, Skeletor’s ruthless second-in-command, who intercepts Teela with a dangerous proposal: an alliance. In exchange for the vial’s secrets, Teela and the Heroic Warriors must someday help the sorceress overthrow Skeletor himself.A MAGIC THAT COULD SAVE—OR DESTROY—THEM ALLThe vial heals the sick and brings food back to empty tables—until the forest around the camp begins to change. Rivers vanish. Trees peel to bone. Creatures flee. As the land around them withers at an ever-increasing pace, Teela must confront an impossible question: Has the very magic she used to save her people doomed Eternia instead? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024) 29.05.2026 1t 12min

  Since the release of Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning horror hit Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrigue in stories about Black life, history, culture, or "Blackness" has taken two forms. First, the history and politics of race have been centered in the horror genre. Second, Black horror has become an increasingly visible topic in mainstream discourses with scholars, critics, and fans contending that Black horror is seeing its so-called renaissance. However, critical attention to Blackness in horror has primarily focused on the U.S. and western world, despite Black stories having featured prominently in the genre-as actors, screenwriters, directors, producers-globally and across cultures.The essays in this handbook explore global Black horror cinema by interrogating Blackness and the ways in which it manifests in films across the diaspora and around the world. Chapters pose and answer questions including how taxonomies of race are presented; who is considered "Black?"; how is Blackness constructed in the culture in which it is produced and/or distributed?; How is horror defined and represented globally and/or culturally?; and what textual role does Blackness play in horror?Sophisticated, innovative, argument-driven research that brings to bear the most enlightened reflections upon Black horror's place in the world drives this handbook. Significantly, The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film (Oxford UP, 2024) presents expansive scholarship about Blackness, expanding the ways in which researchers, critics, and fans see and make meaning of Black experiences. In this volume, leading scholars from around the world contribute provocative, worthy examinations of the popular genre of horror in all its rich and empowering possibility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Oscar Winberg, "Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics" (UNC Press, 2025) 25.05.2026 50min

  Political historian Oscar Winberg has a fascinating new book titled Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics. This book weaves together quite a few different threads in examining the historical context in which the television show, All In The Family, landed on American television screens. Archie Bunker for President examines why this particular sitcom was a kind of inflection point within U.S. politics, within the media landscape at the time and moving forward, and how television production shifted and changed around this one particular television series. Winberg also lays out the path from the early 1970s, when All in the Family first aired, to our contemporary political moment, when celebrity and politics seem to be inescapably intertwined. As Winberg notes in our conversation, television as an entity is inherently conservative, since the functional model was about appealing to the lowest common denominator so that advertisers would be willing to pay for time during shows. In order to reach the most viewers, at least in the age of network television, the television series needed to appeal to the largest market possible, and not “turn off” viewers. What happens in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the television show All in the Family is that this dynamic shifts, and the case is made that it isn’t about reaching the most people, but about reaching the people who have the means and inclination to purchase what the advertisers are selling. This is part of the pitch that Norman Lear makes, that CBS executive Bob Wood finally decides to gamble on by greenlighting All in the Family. The dynamic inside the show itself is to focus on politics: to have the characters within the series discuss different political issues, and engage with the impacts of these issues, from women’s rights and reproductive health to homosexuality to racism and the anti-war movement. In designing All in the Family with Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O’Conner) clearly defined as a conservative and as a bigot, and with Archie’s daughter, Gloria Stivic (played by Sally Struthers) and son in law, Mike Stivic (played by Rob Reiner), as liberals and politically active, the show embedded politics within the narrative. Edith Bunker, played by Jean Stapleton, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, which was making its way through the ratification process while the series was airing, providing yet another avenue for political discussion within the show’s structure. There were quite a few other shows that were developed at the same time as All in the Family that took up similarly political themes in iconic ways, from the Mary Tyler Moore Show to M*A*S*H to Maude. Political conversations were the fabric of these shows in much the same way as in All in the Family, where characters find themselves experiencing dimensions of politics in their lives and they discuss this with friends and family within the narrative construction. This also translated to Americans discussing these shows with each other at dinner, or at the “water cooler”, or at the beauty parlor or barbershop. Given the structure of television in the 1970s and 1980s, before cable and streaming services, options were more limited options, and many of these shows had great writers, actors, and showrunners. This was “appointment television” because there was no way to record or otherwise go back and watch the episode. Episodes were only available at their regularly scheduled time and day—which also meant that lots and lots of Americans were watching the same show at the same time. In some sense, Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics is not only about how one television show remade American politics, but also about how All in the Family remade American television, opening up the networks to developing and airing television shows that integrate politics (of all kinds) into the narratives. There is still quite a lot of television, particularly network television, that is pitched to the broadest possible audience, but the narratives in police procedurals or hospital-centered series or sitcoms integrate different dimensions of politics into their storylines in ways that had not been done before All in the Family. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026) 22.05.2026 35min

  For over a century, Alfred Hitchcock has remained one of cinema's most influential directors. Known as the Master of Suspense, this visionary filmmaker directed more than fifty films over six decades. His thriller The Lodger (1927) marked the start of his signature style, which was later exemplified in classic films like Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). Hitchcock's work received tremendous success and critical acclaim. While he never won the competitive Academy Award for Best Director, he received five Oscar nominations, two Golden Globes, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, a BAFTA Fellowship, multiple lifetime achievement awards, and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Nine of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry. His mastery of tension, innovative camera techniques, and psychological depth continue to inspire and influence modern filmmakers such as Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, and Bong Joon Ho. Drawing on new archival research, previously unpublished interviews, and a rigorous examination of key biographies, A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy (University Press of Kentucky, 2026) challenges the long-standing narratives that have shaped Hitchcock's legacy. Author Tony Lee Moral revisits controversial claims regarding Hitchcock's alleged abuses, scrutinizing biographer Donald Spoto's interpretations—particularly Spoto's portrayal of the director's relationship with actress Tippi Hedren. With his analysis of Spoto's 1980 interview of Hedren, Moral reveals for the first time how one key document contradicts decades of exaggeration. In this comprehensive reappraisal of Hitchcock's career, Moral encourages readers to explore the complexities of creative collaboration and the risks of relying on a single biographical narrative. Marking one hundred years since Hitchcock's first film, The Pleasure Garden, and fifty years since his last film, Family Plot, Moral reexamines the director's cinematic brilliance, storytelling mastery, creative partnerships, and controversies, offering a fresh perspective on Hitchcock's legacy in the post-#MeToo era. Tony Lee Moral is a British filmmaker and author who specializes in film history, especially the work of Alfred Hitchcock. He is the author of Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie, The Making of Hitchcock's The Birds, The Young Alfred Hitchcock's Moviemaking Master Class, and Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th- and 19th-century British Literature.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Thomas Doherty, "How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America" (Columbia UP, 2026) 20.05.2026 38min

  By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from nearly forty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transformative new element to the grammar of cinema: the voiceover narration. Together, the film inventory and offscreen commentary gave rise to the archival documentary, the motion picture genre that preserves and rewinds history. In How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America (Columbia University Press, 2026), Dr. Thomas Doherty tells the story of the archival documentary, spotlighting the first films that set out deliberately to preserve history on screen. He shows how newsreels and documentaries challenged the era’s restrictive censorship and how film began to engage with the great political issues of the day. Doherty considers a range of films—some well-known, others obscure—including J. Stuart Blackton’s The Film Parade (1933), Laurence Stallings and Truman Talley’s The First World War (1934), Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.’s Hitler’s Reign of Terror (1934), Max Eastman and Herbert Axelbank’s Tsar to Lenin (1937), and the March of Time screen magazine. Tracing the creation of the archival documentary, How Film Became History illuminates how motion pictures have come to shape our vision of the past. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Angharad N. Valdivia and Isabel Molina-Guzmán, "Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes" (NYU Press, 2026) 20.05.2026 1t 32min

  From Ghostbusters to Will & Grace, One Day at a Time to Jurassic Park, the past decade has seen Hollywood reach a new peak in its obsession with reboots, remakes, and revivals. Spearheaded by media giants like Disney and Netflix, these projects promise progress—more diverse casts, “timely” social commentary, and redemptive nostalgia—yet they often reproduce the very inequalities they claim to address.Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes (NYU Press, 2026) brings together twelve concise, theoretically rich essays that interrogate how Hollywood’s recycling of intellectual property sustains entrenched systems of racial, gender, and sexual inequality. Across genres and platforms, contributors explore how the industry’s nostalgic return to familiar stories masks an ongoing reliance on white, patriarchal, and heteronormative frameworks of storytelling and production.Blending critical race, feminist, and media studies, the collection analyzes dozens of recent film and television revivals, remakes, and reboots from Roseanne to Charlie’s Angels to ask what it means when entertainment markets strive for diversity while leaving the structures of inequality intact.Accessible yet deeply analytical, Rebooting Inequality exposes how nostalgia has become both a marketing strategy and a political tool, revealing how the “new” Hollywood continues to reanimate the past—profitably, repeatedly, and unequally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Sumana Roy, "Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2024) 19.05.2026 40min

  Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal (Oxford UP, 2024) by Sumana Roy takes an unexpected cast of writers and artists and, in studying their work as ‘plant thinkers’, looks at how their stories and songs, art and films, and, of course, the idiomatic affected Bengali life and thought. Forest and garden, grass and root, weeds and magical plants—supported by a foliage of thought that allowed them to see beyond the botanical, Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Jibanananda Das, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, and others derived their worldview, their poetics and politics, from the plant world. Jagadish Chandra Bose’s scientific experiments, his research and the philosophy that propelled it, religions and rituals that involved an affective relationship with the natural world, a subterranean invocation of plant philosophy in actions and words, in living and in creative practice, and the political possibilities beyond the nation state that such thinking generated give this book its sap and flow. What might we take from these plant thinkers to rehabilitate our consciousness today? Arnab Dutta Roy is Assistant Professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Benjamin Dalton, "Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity" (Edinburgh UP, 2026) 18.05.2026 1t 29min

  Our bodies and brains are radically transformable, mutable and plastic. From the neuroplasticity of the brain to the epigenetic malleability of our bodies and of all organic life, the work of the contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou invites us to consider our plasticity as both a creative resource and an ethical challenge. Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity (Edinburgh UP, 2026) brings Malabou's philosophy into dialogue with contemporary literature and film. It reads conceptions of plasticity and neuroplasticity in Malabou through the mutant bodies of Leos Carax's films; the shape-shifting bodies of Marie Darrieussecq's novels and theatre; the terrifying, traumatic metamorphoses depicted in the fiction of Marie NDiaye; and the anarchic sexualities and identities celebrated in the cinema and writing of Alain Guiraudie. It argues that, in different ways, Malabou's philosophy and literary and filmic texts develop modes of bearing witness to plasticity which can supplement, challenge and extend scientific understandings of biological plasticity, constituting ethical and creative sites of exploration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser 18.05.2026 29min

  In 1828, a seventeen-year-old boy was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg, holding two letters and unable to say more than a few words. The locals adopted him as a kind of municipal mascot; eventually, they learned that he had been bound in darkness until his release and struggled to learn more about his past. Werner Herzog took the story as a basis for his 1974 film–not one of his trademark documentaries–and used it as a meditation on the human condition. It’s an unforgettable experience, like seeing 2001 for the first time. Join us as we discuss the film’s ideas, humor, and audacity. Incredible bumper music by John Deley. The German title of the film is Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is also the title of Werner Herzog’s 2024 memoir. Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
• Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026) 16.05.2026 57min

  Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations (Columbia UP, 2026) offers a powerful new account of how film shaped international relations and national identity. Drawing on previously unexamined and recently declassified archives in Turkey and the United States, Ayşehan Jülide Etem demonstrates how both countries used educational films to align institutional agendas and geopolitical interests. By tracing the transnational network of educational cinema, Etem uncovers how film functioned as infrastructure, circulating ideologies, organizing institutions, and training citizens. Moving beyond conventional accounts of propaganda and soft power, this book exposes how film was central to the making of modern Turkey and sheds new light on the media’s role in global politics. Author Ayşehan Jülide Etem is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, where she also directs the Film Studies Concentration. A media studies scholar, Dr. Etem’s research examines how film operates within infrastructures, how it is strategically sponsored, produced, exhibited, and circulated to shape public behavior, manage populations, and mediate power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film