Episodes

  • Blair Farrell, "The Avengers in Video Games" (McFarland, 2021)

    Blair Farrell, "The Avengers in Video Games" (McFarland, 2021)
    Mar 5 2025
    For decades, Marvel Comics' superhero group the Avengers have captured the imagination of millions, whether in comics, multi-billion dollar grossing films or video games. Similar to the chronology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers video games first started with titles driven by single characters, like Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor and Captain America. Over time, the games grew to include more and more heroes, culminating in playing experiences that featured the Avengers assembled. The Avengers in Video Games (McFarland, 2021) is the first-ever book assessing the video games starring "Earth's Mightiest Heroes." Featured games span consoles and platforms, from popular PlayStation and Xbox titles to an arcade game in danger of being lost to time. All video games are covered in depth, with each entry including game background and a detailed review from the author. Some game entries also include behind-the-scenes knowledge from the developers themselves, providing exclusive details on the Marvel video game universe. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    40 mins
  • Ilan Stavans, "Latino USA: A Cartoon History" (Basic Books, 2024)

    Ilan Stavans, "Latino USA: A Cartoon History" (Basic Books, 2024)
    Feb 22 2025
    This interview includes Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, Professor of Humanities, Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPR-M); Annette Martínez-Iñesta, Instructor of Italian, UPR-M; and Baruch Vergara, Artist and Professor of Plastic Arts, UPR-M. This episode has been sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, the Department of Humanities at the UPR-M, and the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes. This is the second podcast with Ilan Stavans about Latino USA; the first, in Spanish, is available on the New Books Network en español. About the book: In Latino USA, Latin American and Latino scholar Ilan Stavans captures the joys, nuances, and multiple dimensions of Latino culture within the context of the English language. Combining the solemnity of so-called serious literature and history with the inherently theatrical and humorous form of comics, this cartoon history of Latinos includes Columbus, the Alamo, Desi Arnaz, West Side Story, Castro, Guevara, the Bay of Pigs, Neruda, the Mariel boatlift, Selena, Sonia Sotomayor, and much more. To embrace the sweep of Hispanic civilization and its riot of types, archetypes, and stereotypes, Stavans deploys a series of "cliché figurines" as narrators, including a toucan (displayed regularly in books by García Márquez, Allende, and others), the beloved Latino comedian Cantinflas, a masked wrestler, and Captain America. Their multiple, at times contradictory voices provide unique perspectives on Latino history, together creating a carnivalesque epic, democratic and impartial. Updated to bring the book up to the present moment, this twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes thirty new pages of Latino history, from Hamilton to George Santos. Latino USA, like the history it so entertainingly relates, is a treasure trove of irreverence, wit, subversion, anarchy, politics, humanism, and celebration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 34 mins
  • Jaqueline Berndt, "The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

    Jaqueline Berndt, "The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
    Feb 11 2025
    In recent years, manga and anime have attracted increasing scholarly interest beyond the realm of Japanese studies. This Companion takes a unique approach, committed to exploring both the similarities and differences between these two distinct but interrelated media forms. Firmly based in Japanese sources, The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime (Cambridge UP, 2024) offers a lively and accessible introduction, exploring the local contexts of manga and anime production, distribution, and reception in Japan, as well as the global influence and impact of these versatile media. Chapters explore common characteristics such as visuals, voice, serial narrative and characters, whilst also highlighting distinct challenges and histories. The volume provides both a basis for further research in this burgeoning field and a source of inspiration for those new to the topic. Listeners are also invited to observe an author roundtable on Feb.19, 2025. Please RSVP here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    44 mins
  • Badiucao and Mellissa Chan, "You Must Take Part in Revolution" (Street Noise Books, 2024)

    Badiucao and Mellissa Chan, "You Must Take Part in Revolution" (Street Noise Books, 2024)
    Feb 4 2025
    You Must Take Part In Revolution is a mind-bending graphic novel by award-winning journalist Melissa Chan and acclaimed dissident artist Badiucao. A near-future dystopia in the vein of George Orwell's Animal's Farm, the book explores technology, authoritarian government, and the lengths to which one will go in the fight for freedom. Three idealistic young people, forever changed by the real-life protests in Hong Kong in 2019, develop different beliefs about how best to fight against a techno-authoritarian China. The three characters take different paths toward transformative change, each struggling with how far they will go to fight for freedom and who they will become in the process. A powerful and important book about global totalitarian futures and the costs of resistance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    50 mins
  • Ewa Stańczyk, "Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland" (U Press of Mississippi, 2024)

    Ewa Stańczyk, "Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland" (U Press of Mississippi, 2024)
    Feb 1 2025
    Antisemitic caricatures had existed in Polish society since at least the mid-nineteenth century. But never had the devastating impacts of this imagery been fully realized or so blatantly apparent than on the eve of the Second World War. In Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland (U Press of Mississippi, 2024), scholar Ewa Stańczyk explores how illustrators conceived of Jewish people in satirical drawing and reflected on the burning political questions of the day. Incorporating hundreds of cartoons, satirical texts, and newspaper articles from the 1930s, Stańczyk investigates how a visual culture that was essentially hostile to Jews penetrated deep and wide into Polish print media. In her sensitive analysis of these sources, the first of this kind in English, the author examines how major satirical magazines intervened in the ongoing events and contributed to the racialized political climate of the time. Paying close attention to the antisemitic tropes that were both local and global, Stańczyk reflects on the role of pictorial humor in the transmission of visual antisemitism across historical and geographical borders. As she discusses the communities of artists, publishers, and political commentators who made up the visual culture of the day, Stańczyk tells a captivating story of people who served the antisemitic cause, and those who chose to oppose it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    59 mins
  • Dan Archer, "Voices from Nepal: Uncovering Human Trafficking through Comics Journalism" (U Toronto Press, 2024)

    Dan Archer, "Voices from Nepal: Uncovering Human Trafficking through Comics Journalism" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
    Jan 31 2025
    How can we better protect survivors? How can we learn from their stories without causing further harm? With a pen in one hand and watercolours in the other, graphic journalist Dan Archer embarks on an investigation into human trafficking and how comics can be used to empower survivors and raise awareness of human rights issues. Based on years of research and reporting, Voices from Nepal: Uncovering Human Trafficking through Comics Journalism (University of Toronto Press, 2024) holds a mirror up to the ways that international and local NGOs study and combat trafficking, reflecting on both the positive and negative impacts they can have. Featuring interviews with trafficking survivors across Nepal, as well as former traffickers themselves, Archer dispels common misconceptions around labour trafficking, sex trafficking, organ trafficking, and more. Through a combination of live sketches, illustrated reportage, and visual testimonies, he champions the use of graphic journalism in human rights reporting and emphasizes the need for a survivor-centric approach to this work. Carefully compiled and expressively illustrated, Voices from Nepal sheds light on an important issue while fostering a discussion about how we can improve the tools and methods we use to make change. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    47 mins
  • James Welker, "Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

    James Welker, "Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
    Dec 28 2024
    Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans (U Hawaii Press, 2024) examines three dynamic and overlapping communities of women and adolescent girls who challenged Japanese gender and sexual norms in the 1970s and 1980s. These spheres encompassed activists in the ūman ribu (women’s liberation) movement, members of the rezubian (lesbian) community, and artists and readers of queer shōjo manga (girls’ comics). Individually and collectively, they found the normative understanding of the category “women” untenable and worked to redefine and expand its meaning by transfiguring ideas, images, and practices selectively appropriated from the “West.” They did so, however, while remaining firmly fixed on the local. Thus, for many, this ostensibly Western focus was not a turn away from Japan but integral to their understanding of being a woman within Japan. Following broad historical overviews of the ūman ribu, rezubian, and queer shōjo manga spheres, the book takes a deeper look through the lenses of terminology, translation, and travel to offer a window onto how acts of transfiguration reshaped what it meant to be a woman in Japan. The work draws on a vast archive that encompasses early twentieth-century dictionaries, sexology texts, and literature; postwar women’s and men’s magazines and pornography; translated feminist and lesbian texts; comics and animation; and newsletters, fanzines, and other heretofore largely unexamined ephemera. The volume’s characterization of the era is also greatly enriched by interviews with more than sixty individuals. Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan demonstrates that the transfiguration of Western culture into something locally meaningful had tangible effects beyond newly (re)created texts, practices, images, and ideas within the ūman ribu, rezubian, and queer shōjo manga communities. The individuals and groups involved were themselves transformed. More broadly, their efforts forged new understandings of “women” in Japan, creating space for a greater number of public roles not bound to being a mother or a wife, as well as a greater diversity of gender and sexual expression that reached far beyond the Japanese border. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    56 mins
  • Sam Langsdale, "Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics" (U Texas Press, 2024)

    Sam Langsdale, "Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics" (U Texas Press, 2024)
    Nov 30 2024
    It’s no secret that superhero comics and their related media perpetuate a model of a straight, white, male hero at the expense of representing women and other minorities, but other narratives exist. Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Sam Langsdale recognizes that female-led superhero comics, with diverse casts of characters and inclusive storytelling, exist on the margins of the mainstream superhero genre. But rather than focusing on these stories as marginalized, Dr. Langsdale’s work on heroes such as Spider-Woman, America Chavez, and Ironheart locates the margins as a site of innovation and productivity, which have enabled the creation of feminist superhero texts. Employing feminist and intersectional philosophies in an analysis of these comics, Dr. Langsdale suggests that feminist superheroes have the potential to contribute to a social imagination that is crucial in working toward a more just world. At a time when US popular culture continues to manifest as a battleground between oppressive and progressive social norms, Searching for Feminist Superheroes demonstrates that a fight for a better world is worthwhile. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    57 mins