Podcasts about postwar television university

This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and under-appreciated resources for feminist film and media studies. In deeply researched and creatively conceived chapters, scholars join with film practitioners in approaching the unfinished film as an ideal site for revealing the lived experiences, practical conditions, and institutional realities of women's film production across historical periods and national borders.  Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon's Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (U California Press, 2023) recovers projects and practices marginalized in film industries and scholarship alike, while also showing how feminist filmmakers have cultivated incompletion as an aesthetic strategy. Objects of loss and of possibility, incomplete films raise profound historiographical and ethical questions about the always unfinished project of film history, film spectatorship, and film studies. Host Annie Berke sits down with editors Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon to ask how this project originated, what makes a film "incomplete," and what unfinished work has to tell us about the nature of cinema and art. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and under-appreciated resources for feminist film and media studies. In deeply researched and creatively conceived chapters, scholars join with film practitioners in approaching the unfinished film as an ideal site for revealing the lived experiences, practical conditions, and institutional realities of women's film production across historical periods and national borders.  Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon's Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (U California Press, 2023) recovers projects and practices marginalized in film industries and scholarship alike, while also showing how feminist filmmakers have cultivated incompletion as an aesthetic strategy. Objects of loss and of possibility, incomplete films raise profound historiographical and ethical questions about the always unfinished project of film history, film spectatorship, and film studies. Host Annie Berke sits down with editors Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon to ask how this project originated, what makes a film "incomplete," and what unfinished work has to tell us about the nature of cinema and art. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and under-appreciated resources for feminist film and media studies. In deeply researched and creatively conceived chapters, scholars join with film practitioners in approaching the unfinished film as an ideal site for revealing the lived experiences, practical conditions, and institutional realities of women's film production across historical periods and national borders.  Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon's Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (U California Press, 2023) recovers projects and practices marginalized in film industries and scholarship alike, while also showing how feminist filmmakers have cultivated incompletion as an aesthetic strategy. Objects of loss and of possibility, incomplete films raise profound historiographical and ethical questions about the always unfinished project of film history, film spectatorship, and film studies. Host Annie Berke sits down with editors Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon to ask how this project originated, what makes a film "incomplete," and what unfinished work has to tell us about the nature of cinema and art. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and under-appreciated resources for feminist film and media studies. In deeply researched and creatively conceived chapters, scholars join with film practitioners in approaching the unfinished film as an ideal site for revealing the lived experiences, practical conditions, and institutional realities of women's film production across historical periods and national borders.  Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon's Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (U California Press, 2023) recovers projects and practices marginalized in film industries and scholarship alike, while also showing how feminist filmmakers have cultivated incompletion as an aesthetic strategy. Objects of loss and of possibility, incomplete films raise profound historiographical and ethical questions about the always unfinished project of film history, film spectatorship, and film studies. Host Annie Berke sits down with editors Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon to ask how this project originated, what makes a film "incomplete," and what unfinished work has to tell us about the nature of cinema and art. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and under-appreciated resources for feminist film and media studies. In deeply researched and creatively conceived chapters, scholars join with film practitioners in approaching the unfinished film as an ideal site for revealing the lived experiences, practical conditions, and institutional realities of women's film production across historical periods and national borders.  Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon's Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (U California Press, 2023) recovers projects and practices marginalized in film industries and scholarship alike, while also showing how feminist filmmakers have cultivated incompletion as an aesthetic strategy. Objects of loss and of possibility, incomplete films raise profound historiographical and ethical questions about the always unfinished project of film history, film spectatorship, and film studies. Host Annie Berke sits down with editors Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon to ask how this project originated, what makes a film "incomplete," and what unfinished work has to tell us about the nature of cinema and art. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Mentorship continues to loom large in stories about women's work and personal lives-- sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. If mentors can nurture and support, they can also bitterly disappoint, reproducing the hardships they once suffered and reinforcing the same old hierarchies and inequities. The stories gathered in Feminists Reclaim Mentorship (SUNY Press, 2023) challenge our fundamental assumptions about mentorship, illuminating the obstacles that make it difficult to connect meaningfully and ethically while reimagining the possibilities for reciprocity.  Does mentorship require sameness? Might we find more inventive, collaborative ways to bond than the traditional top-down model of mentoring? Drawing on their experiences in academia, creative writing, publishing, and journalism, the volume's editors, Nancy K. Miller and Tahneer Oksman, and their twenty-six contributors collectively strive for relationships that acknowledge differences alongside the importance of common bonds. Feminists Reclaim Mentorship will resonate across workspaces and arrives at a moment when the need to form feminist connections within and between generations couldn't feel more urgent. Host Annie Berke sits down with Drs. Miller and Oksman, as well as contributor Dr. Elizabeth Alsop, to discuss the origins of this anthology, the biggest myths behind mentorship, and what mentors and mentees owe to one another. Nancy K. Miller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her many books include My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism; Breathless: An American Girl in Paris; What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past; and But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives. Tahneer Oksman is Associate Professor of Academic Writing at Marymount Manhattan College. She is the author of "How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?" Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs and coeditor (with Seamus O'Malley) of The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself. She reviews memoirs, graphic novels, and comics for NPR and The Washington Post. Elizabeth Alsop is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, and affiliated faculty in the M.A. in Liberal Studies program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Making Conversation in Modernist Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2019) and a number of scholarly essays on 20th-century fiction, film and television aesthetics, and contemporary TV storytelling. Her cultural criticism has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, and The New York Times Magazine. She is currently writing a book on the films of Elaine May. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mentorship continues to loom large in stories about women's work and personal lives-- sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. If mentors can nurture and support, they can also bitterly disappoint, reproducing the hardships they once suffered and reinforcing the same old hierarchies and inequities. The stories gathered in Feminists Reclaim Mentorship (SUNY Press, 2023) challenge our fundamental assumptions about mentorship, illuminating the obstacles that make it difficult to connect meaningfully and ethically while reimagining the possibilities for reciprocity.  Does mentorship require sameness? Might we find more inventive, collaborative ways to bond than the traditional top-down model of mentoring? Drawing on their experiences in academia, creative writing, publishing, and journalism, the volume's editors, Nancy K. Miller and Tahneer Oksman, and their twenty-six contributors collectively strive for relationships that acknowledge differences alongside the importance of common bonds. Feminists Reclaim Mentorship will resonate across workspaces and arrives at a moment when the need to form feminist connections within and between generations couldn't feel more urgent. Host Annie Berke sits down with Drs. Miller and Oksman, as well as contributor Dr. Elizabeth Alsop, to discuss the origins of this anthology, the biggest myths behind mentorship, and what mentors and mentees owe to one another. Nancy K. Miller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her many books include My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism; Breathless: An American Girl in Paris; What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past; and But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives. Tahneer Oksman is Associate Professor of Academic Writing at Marymount Manhattan College. She is the author of "How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?" Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs and coeditor (with Seamus O'Malley) of The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself. She reviews memoirs, graphic novels, and comics for NPR and The Washington Post. Elizabeth Alsop is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, and affiliated faculty in the M.A. in Liberal Studies program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Making Conversation in Modernist Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2019) and a number of scholarly essays on 20th-century fiction, film and television aesthetics, and contemporary TV storytelling. Her cultural criticism has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, and The New York Times Magazine. She is currently writing a book on the films of Elaine May. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mentorship continues to loom large in stories about women's work and personal lives-- sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. If mentors can nurture and support, they can also bitterly disappoint, reproducing the hardships they once suffered and reinforcing the same old hierarchies and inequities. The stories gathered in Feminists Reclaim Mentorship (SUNY Press, 2023) challenge our fundamental assumptions about mentorship, illuminating the obstacles that make it difficult to connect meaningfully and ethically while reimagining the possibilities for reciprocity.  Does mentorship require sameness? Might we find more inventive, collaborative ways to bond than the traditional top-down model of mentoring? Drawing on their experiences in academia, creative writing, publishing, and journalism, the volume's editors, Nancy K. Miller and Tahneer Oksman, and their twenty-six contributors collectively strive for relationships that acknowledge differences alongside the importance of common bonds. Feminists Reclaim Mentorship will resonate across workspaces and arrives at a moment when the need to form feminist connections within and between generations couldn't feel more urgent. Host Annie Berke sits down with Drs. Miller and Oksman, as well as contributor Dr. Elizabeth Alsop, to discuss the origins of this anthology, the biggest myths behind mentorship, and what mentors and mentees owe to one another. Nancy K. Miller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her many books include My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism; Breathless: An American Girl in Paris; What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past; and But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives. Tahneer Oksman is Associate Professor of Academic Writing at Marymount Manhattan College. She is the author of "How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?" Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs and coeditor (with Seamus O'Malley) of The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself. She reviews memoirs, graphic novels, and comics for NPR and The Washington Post. Elizabeth Alsop is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, and affiliated faculty in the M.A. in Liberal Studies program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Making Conversation in Modernist Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2019) and a number of scholarly essays on 20th-century fiction, film and television aesthetics, and contemporary TV storytelling. Her cultural criticism has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, and The New York Times Magazine. She is currently writing a book on the films of Elaine May. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mentorship continues to loom large in stories about women's work and personal lives-- sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. If mentors can nurture and support, they can also bitterly disappoint, reproducing the hardships they once suffered and reinforcing the same old hierarchies and inequities. The stories gathered in Feminists Reclaim Mentorship (SUNY Press, 2023) challenge our fundamental assumptions about mentorship, illuminating the obstacles that make it difficult to connect meaningfully and ethically while reimagining the possibilities for reciprocity.  Does mentorship require sameness? Might we find more inventive, collaborative ways to bond than the traditional top-down model of mentoring? Drawing on their experiences in academia, creative writing, publishing, and journalism, the volume's editors, Nancy K. Miller and Tahneer Oksman, and their twenty-six contributors collectively strive for relationships that acknowledge differences alongside the importance of common bonds. Feminists Reclaim Mentorship will resonate across workspaces and arrives at a moment when the need to form feminist connections within and between generations couldn't feel more urgent. Host Annie Berke sits down with Drs. Miller and Oksman, as well as contributor Dr. Elizabeth Alsop, to discuss the origins of this anthology, the biggest myths behind mentorship, and what mentors and mentees owe to one another. Nancy K. Miller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her many books include My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism; Breathless: An American Girl in Paris; What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past; and But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives. Tahneer Oksman is Associate Professor of Academic Writing at Marymount Manhattan College. She is the author of "How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?" Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs and coeditor (with Seamus O'Malley) of The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself. She reviews memoirs, graphic novels, and comics for NPR and The Washington Post. Elizabeth Alsop is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, and affiliated faculty in the M.A. in Liberal Studies program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Making Conversation in Modernist Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2019) and a number of scholarly essays on 20th-century fiction, film and television aesthetics, and contemporary TV storytelling. Her cultural criticism has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, and The New York Times Magazine. She is currently writing a book on the films of Elaine May. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions, 2022) offers a major contribution to theorizing comedy but also thinking about the particular politics of the genre today. Work is a joke and often the butt of our jokes. Madeline Lane-McKinley argues that in comedy, we find ways to endure and cope with the world of work, but also to question the conditions of capitalist life. When work is slowly killing us and destroying the planet and, at the same time, something impossible to imagine life without, Lane-McKinley considers the possibility of comedy as a revolutionary practice. By appealing to laughter we can counteract many of our shared miseries under capitalism, including our relationship to work.  But to think through these revolutionary aspects of comedy, as a practice, also involves troubling comedy's relationship to the global right turn of the last decade. Stand-up comedy's claims to the artistic freedom of hate speech in comedy represent a fascistic current of our world today, blurring the boundaries between left and "alt" right. Against this current, Comedy Against Work draws from a tradition of feminist critical utopianism, Marxist-feminism, and contemporary cultural criticism to reflect on an anti-fascist poetics of comedy, grounded in a critique of work. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Lane-McKinley discusses the origins of her project, her decision to include her own story and life in her academic analysis, and the comedic virtuosity of the feminist killjoy. Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, The A.V. Club, and The Washington Post. She earned her PhD in Film/Media and America Studies from Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions, 2022) offers a major contribution to theorizing comedy but also thinking about the particular politics of the genre today. Work is a joke and often the butt of our jokes. Madeline Lane-McKinley argues that in comedy, we find ways to endure and cope with the world of work, but also to question the conditions of capitalist life. When work is slowly killing us and destroying the planet and, at the same time, something impossible to imagine life without, Lane-McKinley considers the possibility of comedy as a revolutionary practice. By appealing to laughter we can counteract many of our shared miseries under capitalism, including our relationship to work.  But to think through these revolutionary aspects of comedy, as a practice, also involves troubling comedy's relationship to the global right turn of the last decade. Stand-up comedy's claims to the artistic freedom of hate speech in comedy represent a fascistic current of our world today, blurring the boundaries between left and "alt" right. Against this current, Comedy Against Work draws from a tradition of feminist critical utopianism, Marxist-feminism, and contemporary cultural criticism to reflect on an anti-fascist poetics of comedy, grounded in a critique of work. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Lane-McKinley discusses the origins of her project, her decision to include her own story and life in her academic analysis, and the comedic virtuosity of the feminist killjoy. Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, The A.V. Club, and The Washington Post. She earned her PhD in Film/Media and America Studies from Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions, 2022) offers a major contribution to theorizing comedy but also thinking about the particular politics of the genre today. Work is a joke and often the butt of our jokes. Madeline Lane-McKinley argues that in comedy, we find ways to endure and cope with the world of work, but also to question the conditions of capitalist life. When work is slowly killing us and destroying the planet and, at the same time, something impossible to imagine life without, Lane-McKinley considers the possibility of comedy as a revolutionary practice. By appealing to laughter we can counteract many of our shared miseries under capitalism, including our relationship to work.  But to think through these revolutionary aspects of comedy, as a practice, also involves troubling comedy's relationship to the global right turn of the last decade. Stand-up comedy's claims to the artistic freedom of hate speech in comedy represent a fascistic current of our world today, blurring the boundaries between left and "alt" right. Against this current, Comedy Against Work draws from a tradition of feminist critical utopianism, Marxist-feminism, and contemporary cultural criticism to reflect on an anti-fascist poetics of comedy, grounded in a critique of work. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Lane-McKinley discusses the origins of her project, her decision to include her own story and life in her academic analysis, and the comedic virtuosity of the feminist killjoy. Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, The A.V. Club, and The Washington Post. She earned her PhD in Film/Media and America Studies from Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions, 2022) offers a major contribution to theorizing comedy but also thinking about the particular politics of the genre today. Work is a joke and often the butt of our jokes. Madeline Lane-McKinley argues that in comedy, we find ways to endure and cope with the world of work, but also to question the conditions of capitalist life. When work is slowly killing us and destroying the planet and, at the same time, something impossible to imagine life without, Lane-McKinley considers the possibility of comedy as a revolutionary practice. By appealing to laughter we can counteract many of our shared miseries under capitalism, including our relationship to work.  But to think through these revolutionary aspects of comedy, as a practice, also involves troubling comedy's relationship to the global right turn of the last decade. Stand-up comedy's claims to the artistic freedom of hate speech in comedy represent a fascistic current of our world today, blurring the boundaries between left and "alt" right. Against this current, Comedy Against Work draws from a tradition of feminist critical utopianism, Marxist-feminism, and contemporary cultural criticism to reflect on an anti-fascist poetics of comedy, grounded in a critique of work. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Lane-McKinley discusses the origins of her project, her decision to include her own story and life in her academic analysis, and the comedic virtuosity of the feminist killjoy. Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, The A.V. Club, and The Washington Post. She earned her PhD in Film/Media and America Studies from Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions, 2022) offers a major contribution to theorizing comedy but also thinking about the particular politics of the genre today. Work is a joke and often the butt of our jokes. Madeline Lane-McKinley argues that in comedy, we find ways to endure and cope with the world of work, but also to question the conditions of capitalist life. When work is slowly killing us and destroying the planet and, at the same time, something impossible to imagine life without, Lane-McKinley considers the possibility of comedy as a revolutionary practice. By appealing to laughter we can counteract many of our shared miseries under capitalism, including our relationship to work.  But to think through these revolutionary aspects of comedy, as a practice, also involves troubling comedy's relationship to the global right turn of the last decade. Stand-up comedy's claims to the artistic freedom of hate speech in comedy represent a fascistic current of our world today, blurring the boundaries between left and "alt" right. Against this current, Comedy Against Work draws from a tradition of feminist critical utopianism, Marxist-feminism, and contemporary cultural criticism to reflect on an anti-fascist poetics of comedy, grounded in a critique of work. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Lane-McKinley discusses the origins of her project, her decision to include her own story and life in her academic analysis, and the comedic virtuosity of the feminist killjoy. Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, The A.V. Club, and The Washington Post. She earned her PhD in Film/Media and America Studies from Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions, 2022) offers a major contribution to theorizing comedy but also thinking about the particular politics of the genre today. Work is a joke and often the butt of our jokes. Madeline Lane-McKinley argues that in comedy, we find ways to endure and cope with the world of work, but also to question the conditions of capitalist life. When work is slowly killing us and destroying the planet and, at the same time, something impossible to imagine life without, Lane-McKinley considers the possibility of comedy as a revolutionary practice. By appealing to laughter we can counteract many of our shared miseries under capitalism, including our relationship to work.  But to think through these revolutionary aspects of comedy, as a practice, also involves troubling comedy's relationship to the global right turn of the last decade. Stand-up comedy's claims to the artistic freedom of hate speech in comedy represent a fascistic current of our world today, blurring the boundaries between left and "alt" right. Against this current, Comedy Against Work draws from a tradition of feminist critical utopianism, Marxist-feminism, and contemporary cultural criticism to reflect on an anti-fascist poetics of comedy, grounded in a critique of work. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Lane-McKinley discusses the origins of her project, her decision to include her own story and life in her academic analysis, and the comedic virtuosity of the feminist killjoy. Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, The A.V. Club, and The Washington Post. She earned her PhD in Film/Media and America Studies from Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions, 2022) offers a major contribution to theorizing comedy but also thinking about the particular politics of the genre today. Work is a joke and often the butt of our jokes. Madeline Lane-McKinley argues that in comedy, we find ways to endure and cope with the world of work, but also to question the conditions of capitalist life. When work is slowly killing us and destroying the planet and, at the same time, something impossible to imagine life without, Lane-McKinley considers the possibility of comedy as a revolutionary practice. By appealing to laughter we can counteract many of our shared miseries under capitalism, including our relationship to work.  But to think through these revolutionary aspects of comedy, as a practice, also involves troubling comedy's relationship to the global right turn of the last decade. Stand-up comedy's claims to the artistic freedom of hate speech in comedy represent a fascistic current of our world today, blurring the boundaries between left and "alt" right. Against this current, Comedy Against Work draws from a tradition of feminist critical utopianism, Marxist-feminism, and contemporary cultural criticism to reflect on an anti-fascist poetics of comedy, grounded in a critique of work. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Lane-McKinley discusses the origins of her project, her decision to include her own story and life in her academic analysis, and the comedic virtuosity of the feminist killjoy. Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, The A.V. Club, and The Washington Post. She earned her PhD in Film/Media and America Studies from Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times (Common Notions, 2022) offers a major contribution to theorizing comedy but also thinking about the particular politics of the genre today. Work is a joke and often the butt of our jokes. Madeline Lane-McKinley argues that in comedy, we find ways to endure and cope with the world of work, but also to question the conditions of capitalist life. When work is slowly killing us and destroying the planet and, at the same time, something impossible to imagine life without, Lane-McKinley considers the possibility of comedy as a revolutionary practice. By appealing to laughter we can counteract many of our shared miseries under capitalism, including our relationship to work.  But to think through these revolutionary aspects of comedy, as a practice, also involves troubling comedy's relationship to the global right turn of the last decade. Stand-up comedy's claims to the artistic freedom of hate speech in comedy represent a fascistic current of our world today, blurring the boundaries between left and "alt" right. Against this current, Comedy Against Work draws from a tradition of feminist critical utopianism, Marxist-feminism, and contemporary cultural criticism to reflect on an anti-fascist poetics of comedy, grounded in a critique of work. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Lane-McKinley discusses the origins of her project, her decision to include her own story and life in her academic analysis, and the comedic virtuosity of the feminist killjoy. Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, The A.V. Club, and The Washington Post. She earned her PhD in Film/Media and America Studies from Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it the way she reminds polite society that the sweet, gentle screen martyr (the nasty woman's counterpart) is a fiction too, as much a trick and a dupe as an exploding housemaid on celluloid? And what a surprise—and what a treat—to discover cinema's earliest days are among their nastiest. Coming from Kino Lorber this December, “this four-disc set showcase more than fourteen hours of rarely seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints. The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller. Cinema's First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet.” Host Annie Berke sits down with the curators of this set, Drs. Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak, and Ms. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, to discuss how this project came to be, the steps they took to ensure an anti-racist program, and if the “nasty woman” spirit lives on in the mediascape of the present. Maggie Hennefeld is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018), co-editor of the journal Cultural Critique (UMN Press), co-editor of two volumes: Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019) and Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Duke UP, 2020). Laura Horak is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2016) and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana UP, 2014), Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019), a special issue of Somatechnics on trans/cinematic/bodies and an In Focus section of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies on “Transing Cinema and Media Studies.” Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film at Eye Filmmuseum, the national film archive of the Netherlands. Graduated from University of Amsterdam, Film&TV Studies in 1997 and employed since 1999 at Eye, she has worked on the discovery, restoration and presentation of many presumed lost films. She is responsible for the preservation and presentation of Eye's silent film holdings, including among others the Desmet Collection (1907-1916) and the Mutoscope & Biograph Collection (1896-1902). Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Literary Hub, Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Jacobin, and the Washington Post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it the way she reminds polite society that the sweet, gentle screen martyr (the nasty woman's counterpart) is a fiction too, as much a trick and a dupe as an exploding housemaid on celluloid? And what a surprise—and what a treat—to discover cinema's earliest days are among their nastiest. Coming from Kino Lorber this December, “this four-disc set showcase more than fourteen hours of rarely seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints. The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller. Cinema's First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet.” Host Annie Berke sits down with the curators of this set, Drs. Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak, and Ms. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, to discuss how this project came to be, the steps they took to ensure an anti-racist program, and if the “nasty woman” spirit lives on in the mediascape of the present. Maggie Hennefeld is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018), co-editor of the journal Cultural Critique (UMN Press), co-editor of two volumes: Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019) and Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Duke UP, 2020). Laura Horak is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2016) and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana UP, 2014), Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019), a special issue of Somatechnics on trans/cinematic/bodies and an In Focus section of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies on “Transing Cinema and Media Studies.” Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film at Eye Filmmuseum, the national film archive of the Netherlands. Graduated from University of Amsterdam, Film&TV Studies in 1997 and employed since 1999 at Eye, she has worked on the discovery, restoration and presentation of many presumed lost films. She is responsible for the preservation and presentation of Eye's silent film holdings, including among others the Desmet Collection (1907-1916) and the Mutoscope & Biograph Collection (1896-1902). Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Literary Hub, Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Jacobin, and the Washington Post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it the way she reminds polite society that the sweet, gentle screen martyr (the nasty woman's counterpart) is a fiction too, as much a trick and a dupe as an exploding housemaid on celluloid? And what a surprise—and what a treat—to discover cinema's earliest days are among their nastiest. Coming from Kino Lorber this December, “this four-disc set showcase more than fourteen hours of rarely seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints. The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller. Cinema's First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet.” Host Annie Berke sits down with the curators of this set, Drs. Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak, and Ms. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, to discuss how this project came to be, the steps they took to ensure an anti-racist program, and if the “nasty woman” spirit lives on in the mediascape of the present. Maggie Hennefeld is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018), co-editor of the journal Cultural Critique (UMN Press), co-editor of two volumes: Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019) and Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Duke UP, 2020). Laura Horak is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2016) and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana UP, 2014), Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019), a special issue of Somatechnics on trans/cinematic/bodies and an In Focus section of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies on “Transing Cinema and Media Studies.” Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film at Eye Filmmuseum, the national film archive of the Netherlands. Graduated from University of Amsterdam, Film&TV Studies in 1997 and employed since 1999 at Eye, she has worked on the discovery, restoration and presentation of many presumed lost films. She is responsible for the preservation and presentation of Eye's silent film holdings, including among others the Desmet Collection (1907-1916) and the Mutoscope & Biograph Collection (1896-1902). Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Literary Hub, Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Jacobin, and the Washington Post. 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 makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it the way she reminds polite society that the sweet, gentle screen martyr (the nasty woman's counterpart) is a fiction too, as much a trick and a dupe as an exploding housemaid on celluloid? And what a surprise—and what a treat—to discover cinema's earliest days are among their nastiest. Coming from Kino Lorber this December, “this four-disc set showcase more than fourteen hours of rarely seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints. The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller. Cinema's First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet.” Host Annie Berke sits down with the curators of this set, Drs. Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak, and Ms. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, to discuss how this project came to be, the steps they took to ensure an anti-racist program, and if the “nasty woman” spirit lives on in the mediascape of the present. Maggie Hennefeld is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018), co-editor of the journal Cultural Critique (UMN Press), co-editor of two volumes: Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019) and Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Duke UP, 2020). Laura Horak is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2016) and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana UP, 2014), Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019), a special issue of Somatechnics on trans/cinematic/bodies and an In Focus section of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies on “Transing Cinema and Media Studies.” Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film at Eye Filmmuseum, the national film archive of the Netherlands. Graduated from University of Amsterdam, Film&TV Studies in 1997 and employed since 1999 at Eye, she has worked on the discovery, restoration and presentation of many presumed lost films. She is responsible for the preservation and presentation of Eye's silent film holdings, including among others the Desmet Collection (1907-1916) and the Mutoscope & Biograph Collection (1896-1902). Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Literary Hub, Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Jacobin, and the Washington Post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it the way she reminds polite society that the sweet, gentle screen martyr (the nasty woman's counterpart) is a fiction too, as much a trick and a dupe as an exploding housemaid on celluloid? And what a surprise—and what a treat—to discover cinema's earliest days are among their nastiest. Coming from Kino Lorber this December, “this four-disc set showcase more than fourteen hours of rarely seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints. The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller. Cinema's First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet.” Host Annie Berke sits down with the curators of this set, Drs. Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak, and Ms. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, to discuss how this project came to be, the steps they took to ensure an anti-racist program, and if the “nasty woman” spirit lives on in the mediascape of the present. Maggie Hennefeld is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018), co-editor of the journal Cultural Critique (UMN Press), co-editor of two volumes: Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019) and Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Duke UP, 2020). Laura Horak is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2016) and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana UP, 2014), Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019), a special issue of Somatechnics on trans/cinematic/bodies and an In Focus section of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies on “Transing Cinema and Media Studies.” Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film at Eye Filmmuseum, the national film archive of the Netherlands. Graduated from University of Amsterdam, Film&TV Studies in 1997 and employed since 1999 at Eye, she has worked on the discovery, restoration and presentation of many presumed lost films. She is responsible for the preservation and presentation of Eye's silent film holdings, including among others the Desmet Collection (1907-1916) and the Mutoscope & Biograph Collection (1896-1902). Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Literary Hub, Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Jacobin, and the Washington Post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it the way she reminds polite society that the sweet, gentle screen martyr (the nasty woman's counterpart) is a fiction too, as much a trick and a dupe as an exploding housemaid on celluloid? And what a surprise—and what a treat—to discover cinema's earliest days are among their nastiest. Coming from Kino Lorber this December, “this four-disc set showcase more than fourteen hours of rarely seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints. The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller. Cinema's First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet.” Host Annie Berke sits down with the curators of this set, Drs. Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak, and Ms. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, to discuss how this project came to be, the steps they took to ensure an anti-racist program, and if the “nasty woman” spirit lives on in the mediascape of the present. Maggie Hennefeld is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018), co-editor of the journal Cultural Critique (UMN Press), co-editor of two volumes: Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019) and Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Duke UP, 2020). Laura Horak is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2016) and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana UP, 2014), Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019), a special issue of Somatechnics on trans/cinematic/bodies and an In Focus section of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies on “Transing Cinema and Media Studies.” Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film at Eye Filmmuseum, the national film archive of the Netherlands. Graduated from University of Amsterdam, Film&TV Studies in 1997 and employed since 1999 at Eye, she has worked on the discovery, restoration and presentation of many presumed lost films. She is responsible for the preservation and presentation of Eye's silent film holdings, including among others the Desmet Collection (1907-1916) and the Mutoscope & Biograph Collection (1896-1902). Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Literary Hub, Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Jacobin, and the Washington Post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it the way she reminds polite society that the sweet, gentle screen martyr (the nasty woman's counterpart) is a fiction too, as much a trick and a dupe as an exploding housemaid on celluloid? And what a surprise—and what a treat—to discover cinema's earliest days are among their nastiest. Coming from Kino Lorber this December, “this four-disc set showcase more than fourteen hours of rarely seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints. The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller. Cinema's First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet.” Host Annie Berke sits down with the curators of this set, Drs. Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak, and Ms. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, to discuss how this project came to be, the steps they took to ensure an anti-racist program, and if the “nasty woman” spirit lives on in the mediascape of the present. Maggie Hennefeld is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018), co-editor of the journal Cultural Critique (UMN Press), co-editor of two volumes: Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019) and Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Duke UP, 2020). Laura Horak is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2016) and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana UP, 2014), Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019), a special issue of Somatechnics on trans/cinematic/bodies and an In Focus section of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies on “Transing Cinema and Media Studies.” Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film at Eye Filmmuseum, the national film archive of the Netherlands. Graduated from University of Amsterdam, Film&TV Studies in 1997 and employed since 1999 at Eye, she has worked on the discovery, restoration and presentation of many presumed lost films. She is responsible for the preservation and presentation of Eye's silent film holdings, including among others the Desmet Collection (1907-1916) and the Mutoscope & Biograph Collection (1896-1902). Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Literary Hub, Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Jacobin, and the Washington Post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and represent the nation to itself. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism, on closer view, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success. In every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.  Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream (Oxford UP, 2022) tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption. The mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984); Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions. Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Grant Wiedenfeld explains his personal and familial connections to the book's subject matter, discusses why Hollywood sports films don't always have (or need) a "happy ending," and explains how the genre functions as a "civic screen" for the American public in the decades following the Vietnam War. Grant Wiedenfeld earned a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. He taught courses on sports and cinema in Yale's English Department and Film Studies Program before being hired at Sam Houston State University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Media and Culture. Previous publications include studies of Gustave Flaubert, D.W. Griffith, and André Bazin. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and represent the nation to itself. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism, on closer view, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success. In every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.  Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream (Oxford UP, 2022) tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption. The mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984); Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions. Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Grant Wiedenfeld explains his personal and familial connections to the book's subject matter, discusses why Hollywood sports films don't always have (or need) a "happy ending," and explains how the genre functions as a "civic screen" for the American public in the decades following the Vietnam War. Grant Wiedenfeld earned a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. He taught courses on sports and cinema in Yale's English Department and Film Studies Program before being hired at Sam Houston State University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Media and Culture. Previous publications include studies of Gustave Flaubert, D.W. Griffith, and André Bazin. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and represent the nation to itself. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism, on closer view, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success. In every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.  Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream (Oxford UP, 2022) tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption. The mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984); Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions. Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Grant Wiedenfeld explains his personal and familial connections to the book's subject matter, discusses why Hollywood sports films don't always have (or need) a "happy ending," and explains how the genre functions as a "civic screen" for the American public in the decades following the Vietnam War. Grant Wiedenfeld earned a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. He taught courses on sports and cinema in Yale's English Department and Film Studies Program before being hired at Sam Houston State University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Media and Culture. Previous publications include studies of Gustave Flaubert, D.W. Griffith, and André Bazin. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and represent the nation to itself. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism, on closer view, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success. In every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.  Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream (Oxford UP, 2022) tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption. The mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984); Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions. Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Grant Wiedenfeld explains his personal and familial connections to the book's subject matter, discusses why Hollywood sports films don't always have (or need) a "happy ending," and explains how the genre functions as a "civic screen" for the American public in the decades following the Vietnam War. Grant Wiedenfeld earned a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. He taught courses on sports and cinema in Yale's English Department and Film Studies Program before being hired at Sam Houston State University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Media and Culture. Previous publications include studies of Gustave Flaubert, D.W. Griffith, and André Bazin. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and represent the nation to itself. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism, on closer view, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success. In every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.  Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream (Oxford UP, 2022) tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption. The mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984); Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions. Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Grant Wiedenfeld explains his personal and familial connections to the book's subject matter, discusses why Hollywood sports films don't always have (or need) a "happy ending," and explains how the genre functions as a "civic screen" for the American public in the decades following the Vietnam War. Grant Wiedenfeld earned a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. He taught courses on sports and cinema in Yale's English Department and Film Studies Program before being hired at Sam Houston State University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Media and Culture. Previous publications include studies of Gustave Flaubert, D.W. Griffith, and André Bazin. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and represent the nation to itself. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism, on closer view, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success. In every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.  Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream (Oxford UP, 2022) tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption. The mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984); Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions. Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Grant Wiedenfeld explains his personal and familial connections to the book's subject matter, discusses why Hollywood sports films don't always have (or need) a "happy ending," and explains how the genre functions as a "civic screen" for the American public in the decades following the Vietnam War. Grant Wiedenfeld earned a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. He taught courses on sports and cinema in Yale's English Department and Film Studies Program before being hired at Sam Houston State University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Media and Culture. Previous publications include studies of Gustave Flaubert, D.W. Griffith, and André Bazin. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and represent the nation to itself. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism, on closer view, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success. In every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.  Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream (Oxford UP, 2022) tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption. The mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984); Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions. Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Grant Wiedenfeld explains his personal and familial connections to the book's subject matter, discusses why Hollywood sports films don't always have (or need) a "happy ending," and explains how the genre functions as a "civic screen" for the American public in the decades following the Vietnam War. Grant Wiedenfeld earned a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. He taught courses on sports and cinema in Yale's English Department and Film Studies Program before being hired at Sam Houston State University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Media and Culture. Previous publications include studies of Gustave Flaubert, D.W. Griffith, and André Bazin. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms.

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and represent the nation to itself. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism, on closer view, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success. In every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.  Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream (Oxford UP, 2022) tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption. The mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984); Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions. Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Grant Wiedenfeld explains his personal and familial connections to the book's subject matter, discusses why Hollywood sports films don't always have (or need) a "happy ending," and explains how the genre functions as a "civic screen" for the American public in the decades following the Vietnam War. Grant Wiedenfeld earned a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. He taught courses on sports and cinema in Yale's English Department and Film Studies Program before being hired at Sam Houston State University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Media and Culture. Previous publications include studies of Gustave Flaubert, D.W. Griffith, and André Bazin. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018 (N+1 Books, 2018) collects the best of A. S. Hamrah's film writing for n+1, The Baffler, Bookforum, Harper's, and other publications. Acerbic, insightful, hilarious, and damning, Hamrah's aphoristic capsule reviews and lucid career retrospectives of filmmakers and critics have taken up the mantle of serious American film criticism—pioneered by James Agee, Robert Warshow, and Pauline Kael—and carried it into the 21st century. Taken together, these reviews and essays represent some of the best film criticism in the English language. The Earth Dies Streaming showcases a remarkable critical intelligence while offering a cultural history of the cinema of our times. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, A. S. Hamrah discusses his influences as a critic, lays out the challenges and shortcomings of film criticism today, and explains the differences between film and television. Currently the film critic for The Baffler, A. S. Hamrah was n+1's film critic from 2008 to 2019, as well as the editor of the magazine's film review supplement. He has worked as a movie theater projectionist, a semiotic brand analyst, a political pollster, a football cinematographer, a zine writer, and for the film director Raúl Ruiz. He lives in New York. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018 (N+1 Books, 2018) collects the best of A. S. Hamrah's film writing for n+1, The Baffler, Bookforum, Harper's, and other publications. Acerbic, insightful, hilarious, and damning, Hamrah's aphoristic capsule reviews and lucid career retrospectives of filmmakers and critics have taken up the mantle of serious American film criticism—pioneered by James Agee, Robert Warshow, and Pauline Kael—and carried it into the 21st century. Taken together, these reviews and essays represent some of the best film criticism in the English language. The Earth Dies Streaming showcases a remarkable critical intelligence while offering a cultural history of the cinema of our times. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, A. S. Hamrah discusses his influences as a critic, lays out the challenges and shortcomings of film criticism today, and explains the differences between film and television. Currently the film critic for The Baffler, A. S. Hamrah was n+1's film critic from 2008 to 2019, as well as the editor of the magazine's film review supplement. He has worked as a movie theater projectionist, a semiotic brand analyst, a political pollster, a football cinematographer, a zine writer, and for the film director Raúl Ruiz. He lives in New York. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. 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 uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cahiers du cinéma embarked on a militant turn that would govern the journal's work over the next five years. With a Marxist orientation inspired by the thinking of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, the "red years" of Cahiers du cinéma produced a theoretical outpouring that was formative for the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in the 1970s, and is still of vital relevance for the contemporary audiovisual landscape. It was also the seminal experience for a generation of critics who have dedicated the following half-century to the task of critically responding to the cinema. Daniel Fairfax's The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973) (Amsterdam UP, 2021) gives a historical overview of this period in the journal's history, combining biographical accounts of the critics who were involved with Cahiers in the post-1968 and theoretical explorations of the text they wrote. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Fairfax describes the beginnings of his love of cinema, breaks down the most pivotal essays from this moment in Cahiers' history, and argues for the "annees rouge"'s continuing relevance to contemporary film and cultural criticism. Note: This interview was conducted on May 16, three days before the passing of Jean-Louis Comolli at the age of 80. One of the most influential figures of Cahiers' Red Years (and, indeed, of the entire journal's run), Comolli made a tremendous impact on film theory and criticism, and he will be missed by cinephiles all over the world.  Daniel Fairfax is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. 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 uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cahiers du cinéma embarked on a militant turn that would govern the journal's work over the next five years. With a Marxist orientation inspired by the thinking of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, the "red years" of Cahiers du cinéma produced a theoretical outpouring that was formative for the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in the 1970s, and is still of vital relevance for the contemporary audiovisual landscape. It was also the seminal experience for a generation of critics who have dedicated the following half-century to the task of critically responding to the cinema. Daniel Fairfax's The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973) (Amsterdam UP, 2021) gives a historical overview of this period in the journal's history, combining biographical accounts of the critics who were involved with Cahiers in the post-1968 and theoretical explorations of the text they wrote. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Fairfax describes the beginnings of his love of cinema, breaks down the most pivotal essays from this moment in Cahiers' history, and argues for the "annees rouge"'s continuing relevance to contemporary film and cultural criticism. Note: This interview was conducted on May 16, three days before the passing of Jean-Louis Comolli at the age of 80. One of the most influential figures of Cahiers' Red Years (and, indeed, of the entire journal's run), Comolli made a tremendous impact on film theory and criticism, and he will be missed by cinephiles all over the world.  Daniel Fairfax is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies

The uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cahiers du cinéma embarked on a militant turn that would govern the journal's work over the next five years. With a Marxist orientation inspired by the thinking of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, the "red years" of Cahiers du cinéma produced a theoretical outpouring that was formative for the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in the 1970s, and is still of vital relevance for the contemporary audiovisual landscape. It was also the seminal experience for a generation of critics who have dedicated the following half-century to the task of critically responding to the cinema. Daniel Fairfax's The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973) (Amsterdam UP, 2021) gives a historical overview of this period in the journal's history, combining biographical accounts of the critics who were involved with Cahiers in the post-1968 and theoretical explorations of the text they wrote. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Fairfax describes the beginnings of his love of cinema, breaks down the most pivotal essays from this moment in Cahiers' history, and argues for the "annees rouge"'s continuing relevance to contemporary film and cultural criticism. Note: This interview was conducted on May 16, three days before the passing of Jean-Louis Comolli at the age of 80. One of the most influential figures of Cahiers' Red Years (and, indeed, of the entire journal's run), Comolli made a tremendous impact on film theory and criticism, and he will be missed by cinephiles all over the world.  Daniel Fairfax is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cahiers du cinéma embarked on a militant turn that would govern the journal's work over the next five years. With a Marxist orientation inspired by the thinking of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, the "red years" of Cahiers du cinéma produced a theoretical outpouring that was formative for the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in the 1970s, and is still of vital relevance for the contemporary audiovisual landscape. It was also the seminal experience for a generation of critics who have dedicated the following half-century to the task of critically responding to the cinema. Daniel Fairfax's The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973) (Amsterdam UP, 2021) gives a historical overview of this period in the journal's history, combining biographical accounts of the critics who were involved with Cahiers in the post-1968 and theoretical explorations of the text they wrote. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Fairfax describes the beginnings of his love of cinema, breaks down the most pivotal essays from this moment in Cahiers' history, and argues for the "annees rouge"'s continuing relevance to contemporary film and cultural criticism. Note: This interview was conducted on May 16, three days before the passing of Jean-Louis Comolli at the age of 80. One of the most influential figures of Cahiers' Red Years (and, indeed, of the entire journal's run), Comolli made a tremendous impact on film theory and criticism, and he will be missed by cinephiles all over the world.  Daniel Fairfax is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

The uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cahiers du cinéma embarked on a militant turn that would govern the journal's work over the next five years. With a Marxist orientation inspired by the thinking of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, the "red years" of Cahiers du cinéma produced a theoretical outpouring that was formative for the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in the 1970s, and is still of vital relevance for the contemporary audiovisual landscape. It was also the seminal experience for a generation of critics who have dedicated the following half-century to the task of critically responding to the cinema. Daniel Fairfax's The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973) (Amsterdam UP, 2021) gives a historical overview of this period in the journal's history, combining biographical accounts of the critics who were involved with Cahiers in the post-1968 and theoretical explorations of the text they wrote. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Fairfax describes the beginnings of his love of cinema, breaks down the most pivotal essays from this moment in Cahiers' history, and argues for the "annees rouge"'s continuing relevance to contemporary film and cultural criticism. Note: This interview was conducted on May 16, three days before the passing of Jean-Louis Comolli at the age of 80. One of the most influential figures of Cahiers' Red Years (and, indeed, of the entire journal's run), Comolli made a tremendous impact on film theory and criticism, and he will be missed by cinephiles all over the world.  Daniel Fairfax is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

The uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cahiers du cinéma embarked on a militant turn that would govern the journal's work over the next five years. With a Marxist orientation inspired by the thinking of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, the "red years" of Cahiers du cinéma produced a theoretical outpouring that was formative for the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in the 1970s, and is still of vital relevance for the contemporary audiovisual landscape. It was also the seminal experience for a generation of critics who have dedicated the following half-century to the task of critically responding to the cinema. Daniel Fairfax's The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973) (Amsterdam UP, 2021) gives a historical overview of this period in the journal's history, combining biographical accounts of the critics who were involved with Cahiers in the post-1968 and theoretical explorations of the text they wrote. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Fairfax describes the beginnings of his love of cinema, breaks down the most pivotal essays from this moment in Cahiers' history, and argues for the "annees rouge"'s continuing relevance to contemporary film and cultural criticism. Note: This interview was conducted on May 16, three days before the passing of Jean-Louis Comolli at the age of 80. One of the most influential figures of Cahiers' Red Years (and, indeed, of the entire journal's run), Comolli made a tremendous impact on film theory and criticism, and he will be missed by cinephiles all over the world.  Daniel Fairfax is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cahiers du cinéma embarked on a militant turn that would govern the journal's work over the next five years. With a Marxist orientation inspired by the thinking of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, the "red years" of Cahiers du cinéma produced a theoretical outpouring that was formative for the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in the 1970s, and is still of vital relevance for the contemporary audiovisual landscape. It was also the seminal experience for a generation of critics who have dedicated the following half-century to the task of critically responding to the cinema. Daniel Fairfax's The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973) (Amsterdam UP, 2021) gives a historical overview of this period in the journal's history, combining biographical accounts of the critics who were involved with Cahiers in the post-1968 and theoretical explorations of the text they wrote. In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Fairfax describes the beginnings of his love of cinema, breaks down the most pivotal essays from this moment in Cahiers' history, and argues for the "annees rouge"'s continuing relevance to contemporary film and cultural criticism. Note: This interview was conducted on May 16, three days before the passing of Jean-Louis Comolli at the age of 80. One of the most influential figures of Cahiers' Red Years (and, indeed, of the entire journal's run), Comolli made a tremendous impact on film theory and criticism, and he will be missed by cinephiles all over the world.  Daniel Fairfax is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invites us to debate its terms.” In Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television (Indiana University Press, 2019), author Nick Marx makes this argument and goes on to systematically prove it through a series of case studies dating from the earliest days of network television through to our post-network era. While sketch is an understudied form of television expression and a genre that rarely garners full-throated network support, it remains one of the most playful, political, and experimental kinds of programming in U.S. television. Close readings of the on-screen representations and off-screen politics of shows including Saturday Night Live, The State, and Key & Peele drive home how vital it is that television scholars and fans recognize the power of sketch in forming what we watch, what we think, and what we believe. In this conversation, Nick Marx discusses this book, his first solo-authored monograph, in conjunction with his prior publications, defines his term “reflexivity flexibility,” gives it up for Mr. Show with Bob and David, and gives it to Pete Davidson. Nick Marx is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His most recent book (with Matt Sienkiewicz) is That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them due out this spring from University of California Press. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invites us to debate its terms.” In Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television (Indiana University Press, 2019), author Nick Marx makes this argument and goes on to systematically prove it through a series of case studies dating from the earliest days of network television through to our post-network era. While sketch is an understudied form of television expression and a genre that rarely garners full-throated network support, it remains one of the most playful, political, and experimental kinds of programming in U.S. television. Close readings of the on-screen representations and off-screen politics of shows including Saturday Night Live, The State, and Key & Peele drive home how vital it is that television scholars and fans recognize the power of sketch in forming what we watch, what we think, and what we believe. In this conversation, Nick Marx discusses this book, his first solo-authored monograph, in conjunction with his prior publications, defines his term “reflexivity flexibility,” gives it up for Mr. Show with Bob and David, and gives it to Pete Davidson. Nick Marx is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His most recent book (with Matt Sienkiewicz) is That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them due out this spring from University of California Press. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invites us to debate its terms.” In Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television (Indiana University Press, 2019), author Nick Marx makes this argument and goes on to systematically prove it through a series of case studies dating from the earliest days of network television through to our post-network era. While sketch is an understudied form of television expression and a genre that rarely garners full-throated network support, it remains one of the most playful, political, and experimental kinds of programming in U.S. television. Close readings of the on-screen representations and off-screen politics of shows including Saturday Night Live, The State, and Key & Peele drive home how vital it is that television scholars and fans recognize the power of sketch in forming what we watch, what we think, and what we believe. In this conversation, Nick Marx discusses this book, his first solo-authored monograph, in conjunction with his prior publications, defines his term “reflexivity flexibility,” gives it up for Mr. Show with Bob and David, and gives it to Pete Davidson. Nick Marx is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His most recent book (with Matt Sienkiewicz) is That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them due out this spring from University of California Press. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invites us to debate its terms.” In Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television (Indiana University Press, 2019), author Nick Marx makes this argument and goes on to systematically prove it through a series of case studies dating from the earliest days of network television through to our post-network era. While sketch is an understudied form of television expression and a genre that rarely garners full-throated network support, it remains one of the most playful, political, and experimental kinds of programming in U.S. television. Close readings of the on-screen representations and off-screen politics of shows including Saturday Night Live, The State, and Key & Peele drive home how vital it is that television scholars and fans recognize the power of sketch in forming what we watch, what we think, and what we believe. In this conversation, Nick Marx discusses this book, his first solo-authored monograph, in conjunction with his prior publications, defines his term “reflexivity flexibility,” gives it up for Mr. Show with Bob and David, and gives it to Pete Davidson. Nick Marx is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His most recent book (with Matt Sienkiewicz) is That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them due out this spring from University of California Press. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invites us to debate its terms.” In Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television (Indiana University Press, 2019), author Nick Marx makes this argument and goes on to systematically prove it through a series of case studies dating from the earliest days of network television through to our post-network era. While sketch is an understudied form of television expression and a genre that rarely garners full-throated network support, it remains one of the most playful, political, and experimental kinds of programming in U.S. television. Close readings of the on-screen representations and off-screen politics of shows including Saturday Night Live, The State, and Key & Peele drive home how vital it is that television scholars and fans recognize the power of sketch in forming what we watch, what we think, and what we believe. In this conversation, Nick Marx discusses this book, his first solo-authored monograph, in conjunction with his prior publications, defines his term “reflexivity flexibility,” gives it up for Mr. Show with Bob and David, and gives it to Pete Davidson. Nick Marx is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His most recent book (with Matt Sienkiewicz) is That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them due out this spring from University of California Press. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invites us to debate its terms.” In Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television (Indiana University Press, 2019), author Nick Marx makes this argument and goes on to systematically prove it through a series of case studies dating from the earliest days of network television through to our post-network era. While sketch is an understudied form of television expression and a genre that rarely garners full-throated network support, it remains one of the most playful, political, and experimental kinds of programming in U.S. television. Close readings of the on-screen representations and off-screen politics of shows including Saturday Night Live, The State, and Key & Peele drive home how vital it is that television scholars and fans recognize the power of sketch in forming what we watch, what we think, and what we believe. In this conversation, Nick Marx discusses this book, his first solo-authored monograph, in conjunction with his prior publications, defines his term “reflexivity flexibility,” gives it up for Mr. Show with Bob and David, and gives it to Pete Davidson. Nick Marx is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His most recent book (with Matt Sienkiewicz) is That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them due out this spring from University of California Press. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

“Sketch comedy – more than any other television genre – lays bare the process of identity formation, pokes fun at its contradictions, and invites us to debate its terms.” In Sketch Comedy: Identity, Reflexivity, and American Television (Indiana University Press, 2019), author Nick Marx makes this argument and goes on to systematically prove it through a series of case studies dating from the earliest days of network television through to our post-network era. While sketch is an understudied form of television expression and a genre that rarely garners full-throated network support, it remains one of the most playful, political, and experimental kinds of programming in U.S. television. Close readings of the on-screen representations and off-screen politics of shows including Saturday Night Live, The State, and Key & Peele drive home how vital it is that television scholars and fans recognize the power of sketch in forming what we watch, what we think, and what we believe. In this conversation, Nick Marx discusses this book, his first solo-authored monograph, in conjunction with his prior publications, defines his term “reflexivity flexibility,” gives it up for Mr. Show with Bob and David, and gives it to Pete Davidson. Nick Marx is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His most recent book (with Matt Sienkiewicz) is That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them due out this spring from University of California Press. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate's resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor's passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens' book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking. Dana Stevens has been Slate's film critic since 2006. She is also a cohost of the magazine's long-running weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and Bookforum. Stevens lives with her family in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @thehighsign. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate's resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor's passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens' book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking. Dana Stevens has been Slate's film critic since 2006. She is also a cohost of the magazine's long-running weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and Bookforum. Stevens lives with her family in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @thehighsign. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate's resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor's passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens' book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking. Dana Stevens has been Slate's film critic since 2006. She is also a cohost of the magazine's long-running weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and Bookforum. Stevens lives with her family in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @thehighsign. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate's resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor's passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens' book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking. Dana Stevens has been Slate's film critic since 2006. She is also a cohost of the magazine's long-running weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and Bookforum. Stevens lives with her family in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @thehighsign. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate's resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor's passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens' book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking. Dana Stevens has been Slate's film critic since 2006. She is also a cohost of the magazine's long-running weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and Bookforum. Stevens lives with her family in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @thehighsign. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate's resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor's passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens' book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking. Dana Stevens has been Slate's film critic since 2006. She is also a cohost of the magazine's long-running weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and Bookforum. Stevens lives with her family in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @thehighsign. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate's resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor's passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens' book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking. Dana Stevens has been Slate's film critic since 2006. She is also a cohost of the magazine's long-running weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and Bookforum. Stevens lives with her family in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @thehighsign. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate's resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor's passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens' book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking. Dana Stevens has been Slate's film critic since 2006. She is also a cohost of the magazine's long-running weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and Bookforum. Stevens lives with her family in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @thehighsign. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate's resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor's passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens' book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking. Dana Stevens has been Slate's film critic since 2006. She is also a cohost of the magazine's long-running weekly culture podcast, the Slate Culture Gabfest, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and Bookforum. Stevens lives with her family in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @thehighsign. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. You can follow her on Twitter @sayanniething. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its purpose, a spectacular rise, struggles as it reached the top, and an eventual decline.” This is how Isaac Butler articulates his project in The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, February 2022). The Method tracks the origins of this transcontinental school of naturalistic acting and its many contradictions, including its emphasis on individualist achievement within communitarian organizations and the actorly tension between psychological interiority and external action when building a character. In following the life of this concept, Butler reveals the impossibly charming, ambitious, questionable cast of characters that have defined the terms of Western acting in the twentieth century. In the process, he clears up many of the public misunderstandings around Method as an approach and as a style. In this discussion, Butler details his first career in the theater as a professional actor, explores how Constantin Stanislavski's “system” of acting was the farthest thing from systematic, explains the difference between method and Method, and divulges the many rivalries and hostilities between American M/method practitioners and instructors at mid-century. Isaac Butler is the coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler's writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. For Slate, he created and hosted Lend Me Your Ears, a podcast about Shakespeare and politics, and currently co-hosts Working, a podcast about the creative process. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. He is the co-creator, with Darcy James Argue and Peter Nigrini, of Real Enemies, a multimedia exploration of conspiracy theories in the American psyche, which was named one of the best live events of 2015 by the New York Times and has been adapted into a feature-length film. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at the New School and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its purpose, a spectacular rise, struggles as it reached the top, and an eventual decline.” This is how Isaac Butler articulates his project in The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, February 2022). The Method tracks the origins of this transcontinental school of naturalistic acting and its many contradictions, including its emphasis on individualist achievement within communitarian organizations and the actorly tension between psychological interiority and external action when building a character. In following the life of this concept, Butler reveals the impossibly charming, ambitious, questionable cast of characters that have defined the terms of Western acting in the twentieth century. In the process, he clears up many of the public misunderstandings around Method as an approach and as a style. In this discussion, Butler details his first career in the theater as a professional actor, explores how Constantin Stanislavski's “system” of acting was the farthest thing from systematic, explains the difference between method and Method, and divulges the many rivalries and hostilities between American M/method practitioners and instructors at mid-century. Isaac Butler is the coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler's writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. For Slate, he created and hosted Lend Me Your Ears, a podcast about Shakespeare and politics, and currently co-hosts Working, a podcast about the creative process. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. He is the co-creator, with Darcy James Argue and Peter Nigrini, of Real Enemies, a multimedia exploration of conspiracy theories in the American psyche, which was named one of the best live events of 2015 by the New York Times and has been adapted into a feature-length film. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at the New School and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its purpose, a spectacular rise, struggles as it reached the top, and an eventual decline.” This is how Isaac Butler articulates his project in The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, February 2022). The Method tracks the origins of this transcontinental school of naturalistic acting and its many contradictions, including its emphasis on individualist achievement within communitarian organizations and the actorly tension between psychological interiority and external action when building a character. In following the life of this concept, Butler reveals the impossibly charming, ambitious, questionable cast of characters that have defined the terms of Western acting in the twentieth century. In the process, he clears up many of the public misunderstandings around Method as an approach and as a style. In this discussion, Butler details his first career in the theater as a professional actor, explores how Constantin Stanislavski's “system” of acting was the farthest thing from systematic, explains the difference between method and Method, and divulges the many rivalries and hostilities between American M/method practitioners and instructors at mid-century. Isaac Butler is the coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler's writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. For Slate, he created and hosted Lend Me Your Ears, a podcast about Shakespeare and politics, and currently co-hosts Working, a podcast about the creative process. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. He is the co-creator, with Darcy James Argue and Peter Nigrini, of Real Enemies, a multimedia exploration of conspiracy theories in the American psyche, which was named one of the best live events of 2015 by the New York Times and has been adapted into a feature-length film. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at the New School and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its purpose, a spectacular rise, struggles as it reached the top, and an eventual decline.” This is how Isaac Butler articulates his project in The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, February 2022). The Method tracks the origins of this transcontinental school of naturalistic acting and its many contradictions, including its emphasis on individualist achievement within communitarian organizations and the actorly tension between psychological interiority and external action when building a character. In following the life of this concept, Butler reveals the impossibly charming, ambitious, questionable cast of characters that have defined the terms of Western acting in the twentieth century. In the process, he clears up many of the public misunderstandings around Method as an approach and as a style. In this discussion, Butler details his first career in the theater as a professional actor, explores how Constantin Stanislavski's “system” of acting was the farthest thing from systematic, explains the difference between method and Method, and divulges the many rivalries and hostilities between American M/method practitioners and instructors at mid-century. Isaac Butler is the coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler's writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. For Slate, he created and hosted Lend Me Your Ears, a podcast about Shakespeare and politics, and currently co-hosts Working, a podcast about the creative process. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. He is the co-creator, with Darcy James Argue and Peter Nigrini, of Real Enemies, a multimedia exploration of conspiracy theories in the American psyche, which was named one of the best live events of 2015 by the New York Times and has been adapted into a feature-length film. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at the New School and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its purpose, a spectacular rise, struggles as it reached the top, and an eventual decline.” This is how Isaac Butler articulates his project in The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, February 2022). The Method tracks the origins of this transcontinental school of naturalistic acting and its many contradictions, including its emphasis on individualist achievement within communitarian organizations and the actorly tension between psychological interiority and external action when building a character. In following the life of this concept, Butler reveals the impossibly charming, ambitious, questionable cast of characters that have defined the terms of Western acting in the twentieth century. In the process, he clears up many of the public misunderstandings around Method as an approach and as a style. In this discussion, Butler details his first career in the theater as a professional actor, explores how Constantin Stanislavski's “system” of acting was the farthest thing from systematic, explains the difference between method and Method, and divulges the many rivalries and hostilities between American M/method practitioners and instructors at mid-century. Isaac Butler is the coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler's writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. For Slate, he created and hosted Lend Me Your Ears, a podcast about Shakespeare and politics, and currently co-hosts Working, a podcast about the creative process. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. He is the co-creator, with Darcy James Argue and Peter Nigrini, of Real Enemies, a multimedia exploration of conspiracy theories in the American psyche, which was named one of the best live events of 2015 by the New York Times and has been adapted into a feature-length film. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at the New School and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its purpose, a spectacular rise, struggles as it reached the top, and an eventual decline.” This is how Isaac Butler articulates his project in The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, February 2022). The Method tracks the origins of this transcontinental school of naturalistic acting and its many contradictions, including its emphasis on individualist achievement within communitarian organizations and the actorly tension between psychological interiority and external action when building a character. In following the life of this concept, Butler reveals the impossibly charming, ambitious, questionable cast of characters that have defined the terms of Western acting in the twentieth century. In the process, he clears up many of the public misunderstandings around Method as an approach and as a style. In this discussion, Butler details his first career in the theater as a professional actor, explores how Constantin Stanislavski's “system” of acting was the farthest thing from systematic, explains the difference between method and Method, and divulges the many rivalries and hostilities between American M/method practitioners and instructors at mid-century. Isaac Butler is the coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler's writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. For Slate, he created and hosted Lend Me Your Ears, a podcast about Shakespeare and politics, and currently co-hosts Working, a podcast about the creative process. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. He is the co-creator, with Darcy James Argue and Peter Nigrini, of Real Enemies, a multimedia exploration of conspiracy theories in the American psyche, which was named one of the best live events of 2015 by the New York Times and has been adapted into a feature-length film. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at the New School and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its purpose, a spectacular rise, struggles as it reached the top, and an eventual decline.” This is how Isaac Butler articulates his project in The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, February 2022). The Method tracks the origins of this transcontinental school of naturalistic acting and its many contradictions, including its emphasis on individualist achievement within communitarian organizations and the actorly tension between psychological interiority and external action when building a character. In following the life of this concept, Butler reveals the impossibly charming, ambitious, questionable cast of characters that have defined the terms of Western acting in the twentieth century. In the process, he clears up many of the public misunderstandings around Method as an approach and as a style. In this discussion, Butler details his first career in the theater as a professional actor, explores how Constantin Stanislavski's “system” of acting was the farthest thing from systematic, explains the difference between method and Method, and divulges the many rivalries and hostilities between American M/method practitioners and instructors at mid-century. Isaac Butler is the coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler's writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. For Slate, he created and hosted Lend Me Your Ears, a podcast about Shakespeare and politics, and currently co-hosts Working, a podcast about the creative process. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. He is the co-creator, with Darcy James Argue and Peter Nigrini, of Real Enemies, a multimedia exploration of conspiracy theories in the American psyche, which was named one of the best live events of 2015 by the New York Times and has been adapted into a feature-length film. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at the New School and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history