New Books in Performing Arts

Risible: Laughter without Reason and the Reproduction of Sound (University of California Press, 2024) explores the forgotten history of laughter, from ancient Greece to the sitcom stages of Hollywood. Delia Casadei approaches laughter not as a phenomenon that can be accounted for by studies of humor and theories of comedy but rather as a technique of the human body, knowable by its repetitive, clipped, and proliferating sound and its enduring links to the capacity for language and reproduction. This buried genealogy of laughter re-emerges with explosive force thanks to the binding of laughter to sound reproduction technology in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing case studies ranging from the early global market for phonographic laughing songs to the McCarthy-era rise of prerecorded laugh tracks, Casadei convincingly demonstrates how laughter was central to the twentieth century’s development of the very category of sound as not-quite-human, unintelligible, reproductive, reproducible, and contagious. A free e-book version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit here to learn more.​ Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University nathan.smith@yale.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight (UP of Mississippi, 2021) is a celebration of jazz and the men and women who created and transformed it. In the twenty-one conversations contained in this engaging and highly accessible book, we hear from the musicians themselves, in their own words, direct and unfiltered. Peter Zimmerman’s interviewing technique is straightforward. He turns on a recording device, poses questions, and allows his subjects to improvise, similar to the way the musicians do at concerts and in recording sessions. Topics range from their early days, their struggles and victories, to the impact the music has had on their own lives. The interviews have been carefully edited for sense and clarity, without changing any of the musicians’ actual words. Peter Zimmerman tirelessly sought virtuosi whose lives span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The reader is rewarded with an intimate look into the past century’s extraordinary period of creative productivity. The oldest two interview subjects were born in 1920 and all are professional musicians who worked in jazz for at least five decades, with a few enjoying careers as long as seventy-five years. These voices reflect some seventeen hundred years of accumulated experience yielding a chronicle of incredible depth and scope. The focus on musicians who are now emeritus figures is deliberate. Some of them are now in their nineties; six have passed since 2012, when Zimmerman began researching The Jazz Masters. Five of them have already received the NEA’s prestigious Jazz Masters award: Sonny Rollins, Clark Terry, Yusef Lateef, Jimmy Owens, and most recently, Dick Hyman. More undoubtedly will one day, and the balance are likewise of compelling interest. Artists such as David Amram, Charles Davis, Clifford Jordan, Valery Ponomarev, and Sandy Stewart, to name a few, open their hearts and memories and reveal who they are as people. This book is a labor of love celebrating the vibrant style of music that Dizzy Gillespie once described as “our native art form.” Zimmerman’s deeply knowledgeable, unabashed passion for jazz brings out the best in the musicians. Filled with personal recollections and detailed accounts of their careers and everyday lives, this highly readable, lively work succeeds in capturing their stories for present and future generations. An important addition to the literature of music, The Jazz Masters goes a long way toward “setting the record straight.” Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Bradley Morgan’s U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025) celebrates fifty years of U2 with a career-spanning retrospective featuring more than 150 images that trace the band’s journey from Dublin pubs to sold-out arena tours. Morgan delves into the history of U2, offering an intimate look at their formation and the evolution of their unique sound. From Boy and The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby and beyond, the book captures how each album marked a creative turning point and cemented U2’s place as musical pioneers. Through vivid photography and thoughtful storytelling, Morgan highlights the band’s artistic growth and commitment to social activism. From Live Aid to Amnesty International, U2’s impact on global causes is as significant as their musical legacy. Readers also gain a rare glimpse into the lives of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr., as individuals, collaborators, and lifelong friends behind one of the most influential bands in the world. A music journalist and media arts professional, Bradley Morgan is the director of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM’s music film festival, manages partnerships for the station, and serves on the associate board of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center. He also interviews authors of music and pop culture books for the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Whitney Laemmli, Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies at the Pratt Institute, about her forthcoming book, Making Movement Modern: Science, Politics, and the Body in Motion. The book traces a technique for visualizing human movement, Labanotation, from its origins in expressionist dance, Austro-Hungarian military discipline, and contemporary physiology to its employment in factories and offices a half-century later. In this way, Making Movement Modern provides a beautiful example of following an object of study into many different, surprising, and unexpected worlds. The pair also discuss one of Laemmli’s new projects, which examines the history of Western ideas and theories that memory might be stored not only in brains but also in bodies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Only 35 years old, Taylor Swift has already had a long career and is a pop culture icon. Her music and career are reported on by the world’s press, and her most devoted fans dissect her every move looking for hidden meanings and clues about her next album and her life. Taylor Swift: The Star, The Songs, The Fans (Routledge, 2025) edited by Christa Anne Bentley, Kate Galloway, and Paula Clare Harper positions Swift as a prismatic figure for the musical world of the 21st century. Necessarily a first look at Swift’s career and songs since she presumably has many more years to make music, the authors in this collection analyze Swift’s songs and vocal choices, how she negotiates the fraught politics around her identity, and how fans and others understand her and her music. Including contributions by scholars, practitioners, and journalists, this book offers a serious consideration of one of today’s most popular music stars that shows why and how she matters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Starting in the 1970s, Palestinian theater flourished as part of a Palestinian cultural spring. In the absence of local radio, television, and uncensored journalism, theater production became the leading form of artistic expression, and Palestinian theater artists self-identified as a movement. Although resistance was not their sole function, these theater makers contributed to an active cultural resistance front. With A Movement's Promise: The Making of Contemporary Palestinian Theater (Stanford UP, 2025), Samer Al-Saber tells the story of the Palestinian Theater Movement over nearly three decades, as they created plays and productions that articulated versions of Palestinian identity, critiqued social norms, celebrated and extended Palestinian cultural values, and challenged the power disparity created by the Occupation. The struggles between Palestinian theater artists and Israeli authorities form the central relationships in this history. Al-Saber juxtaposes the agency of Palestinian theater artists, in their determination to perform against immense challenges, with the power of Israeli authorities to grant or deny permission to theatrical productions. The legal structure of institutionalized censorship prevented Palestinian artists from expressing their chosen message, and the theater movement's search for permission to perform illuminates the disparity in power between the occupier and the occupied. In writing the first history of the Palestinian Theater Movement, Al-Saber amplifies necessary voices in this Palestinian cultural history, told from below. Samer Al-Saber is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Williams College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

The #metoo movement has forced many fans to consider what they should do when they learn that a beloved artist has acted immorally. One natural thought is that fans ought to give up the artworks of immoral artists, but according to Mary Beth Willard, it’s hard to find good reasons to do so. In Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists (Routledge, 2021), she contends that because most boycotts of artists won’t succeed, there’s no ethical reason to do so most of the time. She then argues that canceling artists is ethically risky because it encourages moral grandstanding. In this interview, Allison Leigh talks to Mary Beth Willard about the differences between enjoyment and engagement when it comes to immoral artists, as well as whether we should enjoy artworks that have immoral outlooks and behaviors embedded in them. Their conversation ranges from the problems associated with collective versus individual actions, the positive effects that giving up the work of immoral artists may have for shifting cultural norms, and the distinction between public and private enjoyment. Allison Leigh is Associate Professor of Art History and the SLEMCO/LEQSF Regents Endowed Professor in Art & Architecture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her research explores masculinity in European and Russian art of the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

This is the story of music performed on the streets, in subways, in parks, in schoolyards, on the back of flatbed trucks, and beyond, from the 1920s to the present day. Drawing on years of interviews and eyewitness accounts, Down On The Corner (Jawbone Press, 2025) introduces readers to a wide range of locations and a myriad of musical genres, from folk to rock'n'roll, the blues to bluegrass, doo-wop to indie rock. Some of the performers he features--Lucinda Williams, Billy Bragg, The Violent Femmes--went on to become international stars; others settled into the curbs, sidewalks, and Tube stations as their workplace for the duration of their careers. Anyone who has lived in or travelled through a city will have encountered street musicians of one kind or another. For the first time, veteran journalist and music-industry publicist Cary Baker tells the complete history of these musicians and the music they play, from tin cups and toonies to QR codes and PayPal. Born on Chicago's South Side, Cary Baker began his writing career at sixteen with an on-spec feature about Chicago street singer Blind Arvella Gray for the Chicago Reader. His return to writing follows a forty-two-year hiatus during which time he directed publicity for six record labels (including Capitol and IRS) and two of his own companies, working with acclaimed artists such as R.E.M., Bonnie Raitt, The Smithereens, James McMurtry, The Mavericks, Bobby Rush, Willie Nile, and more. Prior to his PR years, Baker wrote for the Chicago Reader, Creem, Trouser Press, Bomp!, Goldmine, Billboard, Mix, Illinois Entertainer, and Record magazine. He has also written liner notes for historical reissues from Universal, Capitol/EMI, Numero Group, and Omnivore. He has been a voting member of the Recording Academy since 1979. He lives in Southern California. Cary Baker’s website. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming book is U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, October 2025). Bradley Morgan on Facebook and Bluesky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

What if we embraced neurodivergent ways of being not as deviations to be corrected but as vital ways of inhabiting the world? What new realities might emerge? Bringing a much-needed humanistic perspective to the study of autism and other forms of neurodivergence, Counter-Cartographies: Neurodivergence and the Errancies of Performance (U Minnesota Press, 2025) offers a bold reimagining of neurological difference, moving beyond rigid diagnostic frameworks to uncover more expansive, generative modes of existence. Engaging the work of Fernand Deligny to trace how modern taxonomies of neurodivergence have hardened over time, Leon J. Hilton questions how these categories might instead serve as tools for remapping the world with neurodivergence at its center. At the heart of Counter-Cartographies is an exploration of performance and performativity that reveals how the norm of neurotypical reality is continually reinforced through acts of doing, redoing, and undoing. Charting the historical shift away from “mind” and toward “brain” and moving fluidly across disciplines—from digital art and documentary cinema to cybernetics and radical mental health movements—Hilton illuminates the deep interconnections between performance, perception, and the historical construction of the “neurotypical.” Through close readings of works by William Pope.L, Mel Baggs, Wu Tsang, and others, Hilton also examines how neurodivergence has been represented, embodied, and materialized in contemporary art and media. Restless, engrossing, and persistently attuned to moments of rupture when the neurotypical order falters, Counter-cartographies charts a path toward a more capacious, imaginative world. Leon J. Hilton is assistant professor of theatre arts and performance studies and co-convener of the Disability Studies Working Group at Brown University. He is a member of the editorial collective of the journal Social Text and on the advisory board of Spectrum Theatre Ensemble, a neurodiverse theatre company based in Providence, Rhode Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Diana Souhami talks about her new book No Modernism Without Lesbians, out 2020 with Head of Zeus books. A Sunday Times Book of the Year 2020. This is the extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place – Paris, between the wars – fostered the birth of the Modernist movement. Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a patron of artists; a society hostess; a groundbreaking writer. They were all women who loved women. They rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own – forming a community around them in Paris. Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others, some of the most influential, most entertaining, most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age. Diana Souhami weaves together their stories to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-war Paris. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

I’m Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. On this show, we interview authors writing in, around, and about the Asia-Pacific region.King Lear, one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, starts with Lear dividing up his kingdom between his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Goneril and Regan win the kingdom through flattery, Cordelia’s honesty is rewarded with exile. That opening–and the other developments in Lear’s tragic story–hold special resonance for Nan Z. Da, who uses Shakespeare’s play as a way to grapple with China’s history, and her own personal experiences with it. The result is The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear (Princeton UP, 2025)Nan Z. Da is associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Intransitive Encounter: Sino-US Literatures and the Limits of Exchange (Columbia University Press: 2018) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Why did Britons get up a play wherever they went? In Strolling Players of Empire: Theater and Performances of Power in the British Imperial Provinces, 1656–1833 (Cambridge UP, 2022), Dr. Kathleen Wilson reveals how the performance of English theater and a theatricalized way of viewing the world shaped the geopolitics and culture of empire in the long eighteenth century. Ranging across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans to encompass Kingston, Calcutta, Fort Marlborough, St. Helena and Port Jackson as well as London and provincial towns, she shows how Britons on the move transformed peripheries into historical stages where alternative collectivities were enacted, imagined and lived. Men and women of various ethnicities, classes and legal statuses produced and performed English theater in the world, helping to consolidate a national and imperial culture. The theater of empire also enabled non-British people to adapt or interpret English cultural traditions through their own performances, as Englishness also became a production of non-English peoples across the globe. 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/performing-arts

The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Reali's in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines the events and factors that gave the Muscle Shoals sound such a potent cultural power. Many artists trekked to FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound in search of the sound of authentic southern Black music—and at times expressed shock at the mostly white studio musicians waiting to play it for them. Others hoped to draw on the hitmaking production process that defined the scene. Reali also chronicles the overlooked history of Muscle Shoals's impact on country music and describes the region's recent transformation into a tourism destination. Multifaceted and informed, Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals (University of Illinois Press, 2022) reveals the people, places, and events behind one of the most legendary recording scenes in American history. Dr. Christopher Reali is an assistant professor of music at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. Her current research focuses on parade musics in Mobile, Alabama's carnival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Adventurous and passionate” (The New Yorker) Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks has established herself as one of the most communicative, and poetic artists of her generation. She has made a name for herself through commanding performances of standard piano repertoire, as well genre-bending, interdisciplinary projects, and inquisitive work with contemporary composers. This season, she gave the world premiere of Clarice Assad’s “Lilith” concerto, composed for her. Ljova’s “Voices” for piano and historical recording was composed for her and commissioned by the Milken Center of American Jewish Music in 2020.Faliks created a one-woman show “Polonaise-Fantasie, Story of a Pianist”, an autobiographical monologue for pianist and actress, premiered in New York’s Symphony Space and performed worldwide. A committed chamber musician, she has had notable collaborations with Rachel Barton Pine, Gilbert Kalish, Ron Leonard, Fred Sherry, Ilya Kaler, Colin Carr, Wendy Warner, Clive Greensmith, and Antonio Lysy, among many others.Inna Faliks has been featured on radio and television throughout the world. She co-starred with Downton Abbey’s Lesley Nicol in “Admission – One Shilling,” a play for pianist and actor based on the life of the great British pianist, Dame Myra Hess.Her CD releases, Reimagine: Beethoven and Ravel on Navona Records and The Schumann Project Volume 1, on MSR Classics, received rave reviews, and were named to several “best of 2021” lists. With her all-Beethoven CD release on MSR, WTTW called Faliks “High priestess of the piano, concert pianist of the highest order, as dramatic and subtle as a great stage actor.” Sound of Verse, was released in 2009, featuring music of Boris Pasternak, Rachmaninoff and Ravel. “Polonaise-Fantasie, Story of a Pianist” on Delos captures her autobiographical monologue-recital with short piano works from Bach to Carter.Faliks is founder and curator of Music/Words, an award-winning poetry-music series: performances in collaboration with distinguished poets. Her long-standing relationship with Chicago’s WFMT radio has led to multiple broadcasts of Music/Words, which she produced alongside some of the nation’s most recognized poets in performances throughout the United States.A past winner of many prestigious competitions, Inna Faliks is currently Professor of Piano and Head of Piano at UCLA. In Weight in the Fingertips: A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage (Backbeat Books, 2023) Faliks provides a globe-trotting account of her upbringing as a child prodigy in the Soviet Union, the perils of immigration, and the struggle to assimilate as an American. She chronicles years of training with teachers and her steady rise in the world of classical music. With a warm and playful style, Faliks helps non-musicians understand the experience of becoming a world-renowned concert pianist. The places she grew up, the books she read, and the poems she memorized as a child all connect to her sound at the piano. The way she hears and shapes a musical phrase illuminates both classical music and elite performance. She explores how a person’s humanity makes their art honest and voice unique, and how the lifelong challenge of retaining that voice is fueled by balancing the demands of musicianship and being human. Throughout, Faliks provides powerful insights into the role of music in a world of conflict, change, and hope for a better tomorrow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Swiz (Akashic Books, 2025). Swiz was a Washington DC hardcore punk band that existed from April of 1987 through August of 1990, cutting their teeth and carving their place in the scene that birthed trailblazers and contemporaries like Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Dag Nasty, Fugazi, Ian MacKaye, Dave Grohl, and Henry Rollins. Featuring original Dag Nasty singer Shawn Brown, Swiz’s faster, darker, and more aggressive take on the D.C. sound ran counter to the melodic, experimental, and poppy direction the scene had been leaning toward in the years before Nirvana broke the underground. In the thirty-five years since their demise, Swiz’s popularity and infamy have only grown. This first in-depth look into the band is timed perfectly to coincide with the 2025 release of their remastered musical catalog by Dischord Records. The volume is penned by all of the band members, combining historical interviews and personal journals, with present-day conversations, anecdotes, recollections, and reflections yielding new poetry and prose. The writing is complemented by over one hundred unpublished images. This mix of styles touches on band facts and timelines while also spotlighting the negative space around the band: personal and interpersonal moments of its members and the broader community and culture in which they were immersed. Swiz is a deep dive into the band and its members, a celebration of warped memory, and a unique snapshot of a time and scene that continues to inspire musicians, artists, and fans alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

The Beatles’ sojourn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg during the early 1960s is part of music legend. As Julia Sneeringer reveals in A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69 (Bloomsbury, 2018), though, this was just the most famous episode in the neighborhood’s momentous engagement with rock ‘n’ roll during that period, one of importance not just to music history but to the history of modern Germany. Located as it was outside the walls of the medieval city, St. Pauli was known for centuries as the entertainment quarter of Hamburg. The neighborhood had only recently recovered from the hardships of the postwar era when German club owners began booking English bands to play the new style of music that had just been introduced in Europe. The performances quickly proved a hit among teenage Germans, who flocked to out-of-the-way venues to watch the acts perform. As Sneeringer details, the encounters changed everyone involved, giving the musicians the chance to hone their skills and develop their style while through their participation the young men and women in the audience pushed against the conservative social boundaries imposed on them by their families and their society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

hat is the relationship between culture and trade? In Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America Sarah E. K. Smith, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University and the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Art, Culture and Global Relations, examines the history of cultural relations between Canada, the USA and Mexico at the turn of the twenty-first century. The book considers how North America was conceptualised by cultural practices such as art and video, as well as how the arts engaged and responded to free trade agreements in that period. As the world confronts a very different trading and cultural context, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the future, as well as the past, of cross-national cultural exchange. The book will also be available open access in 2026 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Why does critical theory matter today? In Critical Theory: The Basics (Routledge, 2024), Martin Shuster, a Professor of Philosophy and the Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, explores the history, thought and legacy of the Frankfurt School to demonstrate the urgency of critical theory for explaining the world. Beginning with the idea of needless suffering as a concept animating the theory and practice of thinkers such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Benjamin, the book ranges widely across topics including subjectivity, the social world, art, culture and religion. An accessible introduction to complex, but urgent, thought, the book is essential reading for arts, humanities and social science scholars, as well as for anyone who would like to change the world. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

What happens when precarious urban cultural laborers take data collection, laws, and policymaking into their own hands? Buskers have been part of our cities for hundreds of years, but they remain invisible to governments and in datasets. From nuisance to public art, this cultural practice can help us understand the politics of data collection, archives, regulatory frameworks, and urban planning. Busking also responds to underlying questions on the boundaries of the rights to the city, and who has a voice in shaping how our cities are planned and governed.A transnational exploration of street performance, Urban Music Governance examines the intricate limits of legality, data visibility, and resistance from the perspective of those working at the social and regulatory margins of society. Based on a decade of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and Montreal, this book offers a lively account of why such an often-overlooked practice matters today.By investigating the role of busking in contemporary society, Urban Music Governance presents an original interdisciplinary study that exposes how power dynamics in policymaking decide issues of access—and exclusion—around us, above and below ground. Jess Reia is an Assistant Professor of Data Science at the University of Virginia, USA, working on data justice, technology policy, and urban governance. Alex Hallbom is a Registered Professional Planner in British Columbia, Canada. He sits on the editorial board of Plan Canada, the professional publication for planners in Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

The Art of Pure Cinema: Hitchcock and His Imitators (Oxford University Press) is the first book-length study to examine the historical foundations and stylistic mechanics of pure cinema. Author Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor of Film Studies and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Sydney, explores the potential of a philosophical and artistic approach most explicitly demonstrated by Hitchcock in his later films, beginning with Hitchcock's contact with the European avant-garde film movement in the mid-1920s. Tracing the evolution of a philosophy of pure cinema across Hitchcock's most experimental works - Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, and Frenzy - Isaacs rereads these works in a new and vital context. In addition to this historical account, the book presents the first examination of pure cinema as an integrated stylistics of mise en scène, montage, and sound design. The films of so-called Hitchcockian imitators like Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Brian De Palma are also examined in light of a provocative claim: that the art of pure cinema is only fully realized after Hitchcock. Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts