New Books in Film podcast | Listen online for free

Available Episodes

5 of 796

Christopher Hanscom, "Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film" (Columbia UP, 2024)
How does art engage with its social context? What does 'the politics of art' even mean? In his new book Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2023), Christopher P. Hanscom takes on these questions in the context of contemporary Korean literature. Moving away from realist texts and realism, Impossible Speech instead focuses on four key figures: the migrant laborer, the witness of state violence, the refugee, and the socially excluded. Through each, the book probes the boundaries of what we think of as 'nonpolitical' art, showing how by calling on characters to address events and experiences that cannot be spoken about — in other words, by asking characters to speak impossibly — even art that might be considered nonsensical or absurd demands to be read as politically engaged. Although this book uses examples drawn from modern Korean literature and film, Hanscom's contention that the politics of art lies in its ability to confront and challenge the boundaries of what is sayable is deeply relevant to art beyond East Asian Studies. Impossible Speech should, therefore, be of interest to those in Korean literature as well as those interested in literary theory, film studies, and speech studies more broadly. Listeners with a keen interest in Korean literature should also check out Hanscom's earlier appearance on the New Books Network to talk about his first book,The Real Modern: Literary Modernism and the Crisis of Representation in Colonial Korea (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013). You can listen to that interview here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
--------
1:11:14
From Hal to Siri: How Computers Learned to Speak
Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Science in Human Culture program. Ben is the author “The Art of Text to Speech,” which recently appeared in Critical Inquiry, and he’s currently writing a history of text-to-speech computing. In this conversation, we explore: the fascinating backstory to HAL 9000, the speaking computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey 2001’s strong influence on computer science and the cultural reception of computers the weird technology of the first talking computers and their relationship to optical film soundtracks Louis Gerstman, the forgotten innovator who first made an IBM mainframe sing “Daisy Bell.” why the phonemic approach of Stephen Hawking’s voice didn’t make it into the voice of Siri the analog history of digital computing and the true differences between analog and digital Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
--------
54:27
The Politics of Andor (Season 2, Episodes 10-12): Freedom and Order
It’s the UConn Popcast, and we continue our analysis of Andor season 2 with the conclusion to the series. We break down, analyze, and explain the political themes in these finale episodes, focusing on freedom, order and their interconnectedness in both the rebellion and the Empire. We explore the extent to which farce is an operative mode of storytelling in this arc. And we consider Cassian's statement that "nothing is ending," finding it to be both an accurate log-line for this arc and also a statement of some of the broader politics of Star Wars writ large - a cyclical story of the failure to consolidate political order by the Empire and the forces opposed to it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
--------
58:57
Mayukh Sen, "Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star" (Norton, 2025)
In 2022, Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. But she wasn’t the first actress of Asian origin to be nominated. In 1935, Merle Oberon was nominated for Best Actress for the role of Kitty Vane in The Dark Angel, only her second film in the U.S. film industry. But no one knew Oberon was Asian. Her public biography said she was born to white parents in Tasmania, eventually moving to India and, from there, to the UK. But Merle Oberon, in truth, was of Anglo-Indian origin, born in Bombay. She’d hidden her heritage to get around U.S. censorship and immigration laws—a secret she took to her grave, even if many in the industry suspected the truth. Mayukh Sen tackles Oberon’s life in Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (W.W. Norton: 2025). Mayukh Sen is the James Beard Award-winning author of Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (W.W. Norton: 2021). He is a 2025 Fellow at New America, and has written on film for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and the Criterion Collection. He teaches journalism at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Love, Queenie. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
--------
57:15
Vincent L Stephens, "Broads, Sisters, Exes: Feminist Millennial Television" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
This timely and telling analysis identifies the formal and thematic innovations pioneered by millennial feminists between 2012 and 2020 that have shaped the trajectory of our favorite shows today. Author Vincent L. Stephens offers close readings of nine pivotal series, including Girls, Orange Is the New Black, Broad City, Jane the Virgin, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Fleabag, Insecure, Shrill, and I May Destroy You. Across these series, women-led creative teams translated techniques from indie films, inverted gendered television tropes, and engaged in innovative temporal storytelling. These series, often including showrunners who also act, write, and direct, are the product of a new ecology of television driven by the rise of streaming platforms and a demand for more inclusive narratives. Broads, Sisters, Exes: Feminist Millennial Television (Wayne State UP, 2025) optimistically contends with women as aesthetic innovators and maps their influence on entertainment industry reforms that are slowly but surely increasing accessibility for creatives from groups historically underrepresented across media. Through elegant prose deeply rooted in an intersectional feminist perspective, Stephens expands the aesthetic and narrative grammars of contemporary television. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
--------
1:09:41