Best American Cinema Foundation Podcasts (2024)

1
Allison Schrager, "An Economist Walks Into A Brothel And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk" (Portfolio, 2019) 40:40

2h ago40:40

40:40

Whether you are a commuter weighing options of taking the bus vs walking to get you to work on time or a military general leading troops into war, risk is something we deal with every day. Even the most cautious of us can’t opt out—the question is always which risks to take to maximize our results. But how do we know which path is correct? Enter Al…

1
Victoria Sparey, "Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture" (Manchester UP, 2024) 57:34

5h ago57:34

57:34

Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Victoria Sparey examines the varied representation of adolescent characters in Shakespeare's plays. Using early modern medical knowledge and an understanding of contemporary theatrical practices, the book unpacks co…

1
Éric Fassin, "State Anti-Intellectualism and the Politics of Gender and Race: Illiberal France and Beyond" (CEU Press, 2024) 43:24

1h ago43:24

43:24

In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with Éric Fassin (Université Paris 8) to discuss his new book with CEU Press entitled, State Anti-Intellectualism and the Politics of Gender and Race: Illiberal France and Beyond (2024). Éric Fassin examines the trend of state anti-intellectualism…

1
Andil Gosine, "Nature's Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean" (Duke UP, 2021) 1:04:22

35m ago1:04:22

1:04:22

In Nature's Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean (Duke UP, 2021), Andil Gosine engages with questions of humanism, queer theory, and animality to examine and revise understandings of queer desire in the Caribbean. Surveying colonial law, visual art practices, and contemporary activism, Gosine shows how the very concept of homosexuality in the …

1
Sarah A. Bendall, "Shaping Femininity: Foundation Garments, the Body and Women in Early Modern England" (Bloomsbury, 2021) 51:31

7h ago51:31

51:31

In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. This very structured form, created using garments called bodies and farthingales, existed in various extremes in Western Europe and beyond, in the form of stays, corsets, hoop petticoats and crinolines, right up until the twentieth century. With a nuanc…

1
Ariella Aisha Azoulay, "Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism" (Verso, 2019) 52:17

7h ago52:17

52:17

Ariella Aisha Azoulay argues that the institutions that make our world, from archives and museums to ideas of sovereignty and human rights to history itself, are all dependent on imperial modes of thinking. Imperialism has segmented populations into differentially governed groups, continually emphasized the possibility of progress while trying to d…

1
Sarah A. Bendall, "Shaping Femininity: Foundation Garments, the Body and Women in Early Modern England" (Bloomsbury, 2021) 51:31

15m ago51:31

51:31

In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. This very structured form, created using garments called bodies and farthingales, existed in various extremes in Western Europe and beyond, in the form of stays, corsets, hoop petticoats and crinolines, right up until the twentieth century. With a nuanc…

1
Leigh Gilmore, "The #MeToo Effect: What Happens When We Believe Women" (Columbia UP, 2023) 52:09

24m ago52:09

52:09

The #MeToo movement inspired millions to testify to the widespread experience of sexual violence. More broadly, it shifted the deeply ingrained response to women’s accounts of sexual violence from doubting all of them to believing some of them. What changed? In The #MeToo Effect: What Happens When We Believe Women (Columbia UP, 2023), Leigh Gilmore…

1
Natalia Grincheva and Elizabeth Stainforth, "Geopolitics of Digital Heritage" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 56:30

17m ago56:30

56:30

How are digital platforms transforming heritage? In Geopolitics of Digital Heritage (Cambridge UP, 2023), Dr Natalia Grincheva, Program Leader of the BA (Hons) Arts Management at the University of the Arts Singapore and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and Dr Elizabeth Stainforth, a lecturer in the School of Fine Art,…

1
Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema" (U California Press, 2024) 1:06:11

2d ago1:06:11

1:06:11

In Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Pamela Roberston Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness. She considers film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters who are unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed—…

1
Danielle Taschereau Mamers, "Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing: Documentation, Administration, and the Interventions of Indigenous Art" (Fordham UP, 2023) 48:29

3d ago48:29

48:29

How do bureaucratic documents create and reproduce a state’s capacity to see? What kinds of worlds do documents help create? Further, how might such documentary practices and settler colonial ways of seeing be refused? Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing: Documentation, Administration, and the Interventions of Indigenous Art (Fordham University Press, …

1
Julie Peakman, "Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis" (Reaktion, 2024) 40:02

4d ago40:02

40:02

Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis (Reaktion, 2024) by Dr. Julie Peakman investigates the sex lives of women from 1680 to 1830, the period known as the long eighteenth century. It uncovers the various experiences of women, whether mistresses, adulteresses or those involved in the sex trade. From renowned courtesans to downtr…

1
Jessica Cox, "Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (The History Press, 2023) 41:21

5d ago41:21

41:21

Covering a fascinating period of population growth, high infant mortality and deep social inequality, rapid medical advances and pseudoscientific quackery, Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain (The History Press, 2023) by Dr. Jessica Cox is the untold history of pregnancy and childbirth in Victorian Brita…

1
Diana Chapman Walsh, "The Claims of Life: A Memoir" (MIT Press, 2023) 1:15:54

5d ago1:15:54

1:15:54

The engaging memoir of a legendary president of Wellesley College known for authentic and open-hearted leadership, who drove innovation with power and love. The Claims of Life: A Memoir (The MIT Press, 2023) traces the emergence of a young woman who set out believing she wasn’t particularly smart but went on to meet multiple tests of leadership in …

1
Women’s Experiences of Workplace Gender-based Violence and Harassment in Cambodia’s Construction Industry 35:13

7d ago35:13

35:13

In Cambodia, the government and civil society organisations have paid significant attention to Gender-based Violence and Harassment, within both the domestic sphere and, increasingly, in the workplace context. A major driver behind this increased scrutiny of GBVH issues is the presence of international donors in Cambodia, and an expectation that in…

1
Diana Leon-Boys, "Elena, Princesa of the Periphery: Disney’s Flexible Latina Girl" (Rutgers UP, 2023) 1:01:18

7d ago1:01:18

1:01:18

In the summer of 2016, Disney introduced its first Latina princess, Elena of Avalor. Elena, Princess of the Periphery: Disney’s Flexible Latina Girl (Rutgers University Press, 2023) by Dr. Diana Leon-Boys explores this Disney property using multiple case studies to understand its approach to girlhood and Latinidad. Following the circuit of culture …

1
Rose Miron, "Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory" (U Minnesota Press, 2024) 44:18

8d ago44:18

44:18

The past several decades have seen a massive shift in debates over who owns and has the right to tell Native American history and stories. For centuries, non-Native actors have collected, stolen, sequestered, and gained value from Native stories and documents, human remains, and sacred objects. However, thanks to the work of Native activists, Nativ…

1
Cathy Yue Wang, "Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy" (Wayne State UP, 2023) 36:07

9d ago36:07

36:07

Contemporary Chinese film and literature often draw on time-honored fantastical texts and tales which were founded in the milieu of patriarchy, parental authority, heteronormativity, nationalism, and anthropocentrism. Cathy Yue Wang's Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy (Wayne State Univer…

1
Grazia Ingravalle, "Archival Film Curatorship: Early and Silent Cinema from Analog to Digital" (Amsterdam UP, 2024) 1:10:39

14d ago1:10:39

1:10:39

Archival Film Curatorship: Early and Silent Cinema from Analog to Digital (Amsterdam UP, 2023) is the first book-length study that investigates film archives at the intersection of institutional histories, early and silent film historiography, and archival curatorship. It examines three institutions at the forefront of experimentation with film exh…

1
Miss Tibet: Representing Tibet through Beauty Pageants 22:27

14d ago22:27

22:27

What does the Miss Tibet beauty pageant tell us about what it means to be Tibetan in a globalized world? And what understandings of Tibetan culture does it convey? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen talks to Pema Choedon about representations of Tibet and Tibetan culture on the global stage from the vantage point of the Miss Tibet beauty pageant. …

51
Elyse Ambrose, "A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive" (T&T Clark, 2024) 35:27

16d ago35:27

35:27

In A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive (T&T Clark, 2024), Elyse Ambrose looks to an archive of blackqueerness as an authoritative source for religious ethical reflection. This approach counters the disintegrative norms of anti-black and anti-body traditionalism in Christian sexual ethics, even those that strive t…

1
Xiaofei Kang, "Enchanted Revolution: Ghosts, Shamans, and Gender Politics in Chinese Communist Propaganda, 1942-1953" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:24:26

20d ago1:24:26

1:24:26

China’s communist revolution has an intricate relationship with gender and religion. In Enchanted Revolution: Ghosts, Shamans, and Gender Politics in Chinese Communist Propaganda, 1942-1953 (Oxford UP, 2023), Xiaofei Kang moves the two themes to the center stage in the Chinese Revolution. It examines the Communist Party’s first anti-superstition ca…

1
Ellie Tomsett, "Stand-up Comedy and Contemporary Feminisms: Sexism, Stereotypes and Structural Inequalities" (Bloomsbury, 2023) 38:22

23d ago38:22

38:22

How is comedy hostile to women? In Stand-up Comedy and Contemporary Feminisms: Sexism, Stereotypes and Structural Inequalities (Bloomsbury, 2023), Ellie Tomsett, a Senior Lecturer in media and film at Birmingham City University, explores the reality of a comedy industry that, despite many changes, still has a sexism problem. The book draws on a hug…

1
Leah Broad, "Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World" (Faber & Faber, 2023) 57:21

25d ago57:21

57:21

This is a story of four composers whose careers, lives and loves as women working in 20th century Britain have since been largely forgotten. Dr Leah Broad’s 2023 debut Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World (Faber & Faber, 2023), reveals the life and music of some of Britain’s most exciting 20th-century composers. A musicologist who grav…

1
Naomi Cahn, et al., "Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy" (Simon & Schuster, 2023) 1:07:45

27d ago1:07:45

1:07:45

A stirring, comprehensive look at the state of women in the workforce--why women's progress has stalled, how our economy fosters unproductive competition, and how we can fix the system that holds women back. In an era of supposed great equality, women are still falling behind in the workplace. Even with more women in the workforce than in decades p…

1
Rina Verma Williams, "Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated: Women and Religious Nationalism in Indian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023) 45:33

28d ago45:33

45:33

How has the participation of women in Hindu nationalist politics in India changed over time? More broadly, what has their changing participation meant for women, Hindu nationalism, and Indian democracy? In Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated: Women and Religious Nationalism in Indian Democracy (Oxford UP, 2023), Rina Verma Williams places women's…

1
Erin L. Durban, "The Sexual Politics of Empire: Postcolonial Homophobia in Haiti" (U Illinois Press, 2023) 1:03:21

28d ago1:03:21

1:03:21

Evangelical Christians and members of the global LGBTQI human rights movement have vied for influence in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Each side accuses the other of serving foreign interests. Yet each proposes future foreign interventions on behalf of their respective causes despite the country’s traumatic past with European colonialism and Ame…

1
Economic Democracy with Pavlina Tcherneva 1:11:00

27d ago1:11:00

1:11:00

Money on the Left speaks with Pavlina Tcherneva, Professor of Economics at Bard College and leading scholar of–-and advocate for—Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Many of our listeners will be familiar with Dr. Tcherneva's contributions to MMT, especially her book, The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity Press, 2020). She is also Director of Open Society …