Episodes

  • Ken Krimstein, "Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

    Ken Krimstein, "Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
    Nov 23 2024
    Between 1911 and 1912, Prague was home to Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka, two of the twentieth-century’s most influential minds. During this brief but remarkable period, their lives intertwined in surprising ways, driven by a shared intellectual restlessness and a desire to confront life’s most profound questions. Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe (Bloomsbury, 2024) brings to life the overlapping journeys of these two men, exploring how their intellectual pursuits, one rooted in science and the other in literature, unfolded against Prague’s backdrop. Through a careful examination of Einstein’s letters, lectures, papers from the period, and Kafka’s meticulous diary entries, Ken Krimstein vividly traces Einstein’s year in the city marked by frustration and failure. Ultimately, with the help of Kafka, Einstein is led to groundbreaking insight that reshapes our understanding of the universe. This “lost year” becomes a bridge between months of struggle and the moment of breakthrough many consider “the greatest scientific discovery of all time.” Ken Krimstein is an award-winning cartoonist, author, and educator whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Chicago Tribune. He teaches at DePaul University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    32 mins
  • Mimi Okabe, "Manga, Murder and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japan’s Lost Generation" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

    Mimi Okabe, "Manga, Murder and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japan’s Lost Generation" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
    Nov 22 2024
    Little is known about the boy detective in Japanese detective fiction despite his popularity. Who is he, and what mysteries does he unveil about cultural understandings of youth in Japanese society? Manga, Murder and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japan’s Lost Generation (Bloomsbury, 2023) answers these questions by exploring the figure of the shonen (boy) detective in commercially successful manga series such as Detective Conan, The Case Files of Young Kindaichi, Death Note and Moriarty the Patriot. The book explores how these popular works tackle the crisis of young adult culture within the socioeconomic climate of Japan's 'lost decade' and Heisei era, broadly speaking. Mimi Okabe shows how detective manga materialized in a nation undergoing a state of crisis and how the boy detective emerged as a site of national trauma to address perceived youth problems but in thematically different ways. Mimi Okabe is an assistant professor of Japanese Language, Literature and Culture at Baruch College. Amanda Kennell is an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame. Her first book, Alice in Japanese Wonderlands: Translation, Adaptation, Mediation (2023), is out now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    25 mins
  • Eric Drooker, "Naked City: A Graphic Novel" (Dark Horse Books, 2024)

    Eric Drooker, "Naked City: A Graphic Novel" (Dark Horse Books, 2024)
    Nov 17 2024
    Born and raised on Manhattan Island, Eric Drooker began to slap his art on the streets at night as a teenager. Since then, his drawings and posters have become a familiar sight in the global street art movement, and his paintings appear frequently on covers of the New Yorker. His first book, Flood, won the American Book Award, followed by Blood Song (soon to be a feature film). Naked City is the third volume in Drooker’s City Trilogy. His graphic novels have been translated into numerous languages in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. After designing the animation for the film Howl, he was hired for a project at DreamWorks Animation. Drooker’s art is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Library of Congress. He is available for speaking engagements and frequently gives slide lectures at colleges and universities. Drooker is represented by the Wylie Agency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • Scott Henderson, "Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame" (U Texas Press, 2019)

    Scott Henderson, "Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame" (U Texas Press, 2019)
    Oct 8 2024
    It is hard to discuss the current film industry without acknowledging the impact of comic book adaptations, especially considering the blockbuster success of recent superhero movies. Yet transmedial adaptations are part of an evolution that can be traced to the turn of the last century, when comic strips such as “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and “Felix the Cat” were animated for the silver screen. Along with Barry Keith Grant, Scott Henderson (Dean and Head, Trent University Durham GTA) compiled a rich group of essays that represent diverse academic fields, including technoculture, film studies, theater, feminist studies, popular culture, and queer studies. Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame (University of Texas Press, 2019) presents more than a dozen perspectives on this rich history and the effects of such adaptations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Jamie Michaels and Doug Fedrau, "Christie Pits" (Dirty Water Comics, 2019)

    Jamie Michaels and Doug Fedrau, "Christie Pits" (Dirty Water Comics, 2019)
    Oct 7 2024
    A gritty ride through Toronto's immigrant neighbourhoods, Christie Pits (Dirty Water Comics, 2019) tells the incredible true story of when young Jewish and Italian immigrants squared off against Nazi-inspired thugs on the streets of Toronto. This is the history of a gruff and unrecognizable Canada - one of 'swastika clubs' and public bigotry.A homemade swastika flag flown at a public baseball game was the spark that found tinder in these untenable and hateful conditions. What followed was the worst race riot in Canadian history. Archival research and first-hand interviews lend historical depth to an unknown story of resistance against hatred in uncertain times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 mins
  • Paul Peart-Smith, "Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation" (Beacon Press, 2024)

    Paul Peart-Smith, "Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation" (Beacon Press, 2024)
    Sep 15 2024
    As the author of a graphic history, I loved chatting with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Paul Peart-Smith about the graphic interpretation of An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2024). An Indigenous Peoples' History of The United States originally came out in 2014 with Beacon Press. In 2019 it was adapted into a Young Peoples version by Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese. In 2021 it was one of the three foundational texts for the amazing HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes, written and directed by Raoul Peck. The other featured books were two of my all-time favorites Sven Lindqvist’ Exterminate All the Brutes: One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Paul Peart-Smith has adapted what many regard as the first history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples into a stunningly powerful graphic history. Through evocative full color artwork, renowned cartoonist Paul Peart-Smith brings this watershed book to life, centering the perspective of the peoples displaced by Europeans and their white descendants to trace Indigenous perseverance over four centuries against policies intended to obliterate them. Dr. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a New York Times best-selling author, grew up in rural Oklahoma in a tenant farming family. She has been active in the international feminist and Indigenous movements for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. Dunbar-Ortiz is the winner of the 2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, and is the author or editor of many books, including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, a recipient of the 2015 American Book Award. She lives in San Francisco and is a professor emeritus in Ethnic Studies at California State University, East Bay. Paul Peart-Smith is a celebrated cartoonist of over 35 years, with experience in concept art, graphic design, and animation. Having studied to be an illustrator in Cambridge, England, he has worked on comics for 2000 AD, such as Slaughter Bowl . He is the illustrator and adapter of W. E. B. Du Bois Souls of Black Folk: A Graphic Interpretation. He lives in Tasmania, Australia and puts out the bi-weekly newsletter InkSkull . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 18 mins
  • Chris Richardson, "Batman and the Joker: Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture" (Routledge, 2020)

    Chris Richardson, "Batman and the Joker: Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture" (Routledge, 2020)
    Sep 3 2024
    In Batman and The Joker: Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2020), Chris Richardson presents a cultural analysis of the ways gender, identity, and sexuality are negotiated in the rivalry of Batman and The Joker. Richardson's queer reading of the text provides new understandings of Batman and The Joker and the transformations of the Gotham Universe throughout its 80-year existence. In particular, Richardson investigates how artists, writers, and fans engage with, challenge, and interpret gendered and sexual representations of this influential and popular rivalry. Fans of Batman and The Joker will find this work engaging and applicable across a range of scholarly fields and popular interests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    55 mins
  • Laura Moretti and Satō Yukiko, "Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan: The World of Kusazōshi" (Brill, 2024)

    Laura Moretti and Satō Yukiko, "Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan: The World of Kusazōshi" (Brill, 2024)
    Jul 19 2024
    Part of a formidable publishing industry, cheap yet eye-catching graphic narratives consistently charmed early modern Japanese readers for around two hundred years. These booklets were called kusazōshi (“grass books”). Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan: The World of Kusazōshi (Brill, 2024) is the first English-language publication of its kind. It enables anyone new to kusazōshi to gain comprehensive knowledge of the field. For the specialist, our edited volume marks a turning point in scholarship, uncovering fresh research avenues. While exploring the powerful effects of the visual-verbal imagination, this collection opens up bold new vistas on the act of reading and advances provocations around comics and manga. Contributors are: Jaqueline Berndt, Joseph Bills, Michael Emmerich, Adam L. Kern, Fumiko Kobayashi, Frederick Feilden, Laura Moretti, Matsubara Noriko, Satō Satoru, Satō Yukiko, Satoko Shimazaki, Takagi Gen, Tanahashi Masahiro, Ellis Tinios, Tsuda Mayumi and, Glynne Walley. Discount code 72435 for 35%. Valid till 31 Dec, 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins