Joanna Walsh (2025). Amateurs: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters Book review by Eilís Nolan Joanna Walsh’s Amateurs: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters (2025) discusses the online amateur; a nebulous term that Walsh spends a chunk of the introduction (and remainder of the book) defining. Labelling herself as an amateur from the beginning, Walsh defines being a conventional amateur in many ways: “unpaid, or not paid at a professional rate,” “enthus

Joy Buolamwini (2024). Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines Book review by Angelica Kalika Dr. Joy Buolamwini is an award-winning researcher, poet of code, and activist. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League and now is an Inaugural Senior Fellow of Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. Her work at the MIT Media lab, where she received her PhD in 2022, was the focus of a Netflix documentary Coded Bias. Her research focuses on algor

Book review by Anagha Gopal Shakespeare, Race and Anglophone Popular Culture (2026) edited by Vanessa I. Corredera and L. Monique Pittman operates at the intersections of Shakespeare, race, and popular culture. What sets the book apart is its engagement with references to Shakespeare that may not at first glance seem to be significant to the texts that they are in. However, as the editors acknowledge, popular culture references are how the majority of people come into contact

Steven Feld. (1990, second ed.) Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression. University of Pennsylvania Press. Book review by Heba Fatima, Lecturer in English, Birupa College (affiliated to Utkal University, Odisha) Steven Feld is an American anthropologist, ethnomusicologist and sound artist known for his research on the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea. The Kaluli are a group of indigenous people residing in the rain forest regions near Mt.

Huang, Hsinya, and Chia-hua Yvonne Lin, eds. Pacific Literatures as World Literature. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2023. Book Review by Shane Gomes, Tennessee State University The collection Pacific Literatures as World Literatures is an ambitious volume that actively tries to define how cultural texts from Oceania[1] should be incorporated into the corpus collectively known as “World Literature” while addressing the specific concerns of the geography, history, and cultures of

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. (1993). The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion-Our Social Skin, 2nd ed. The University of Chicago Press. Book review by Shadab Zaveri The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion-Our Social Skin, second edition, by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann was published in 1993, and the first edition released in 1984. The book is extremely important in media and communication studies, as the theoretical concept of The Spiral of Silence (1993) offers insights into how public

Rebekah Lee. (2021). Health, Healing, and Illness in African History. Bloomsbury Publishing. Book review by Protichi Chatterjee Rebekah Lee, currently employed at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, specialises in the biomedical history of sub-Saharan Africa. Her latest publication Health, Healing, and Illness in African History (2021) synthesises her classroom teaching and archival research on sub-Saharan public cultures of illness and healing in two parts. Part O

Srirupa Chatterjee and Shweta Rao Garg, ed. Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture . Temple University Press, 2024 Book review by Debadrita Saha, Ashoka University The economic liberalisation of India in 1991 “transformed its economic policies from the erstwhile License Raj, or the control economy”, to embrace laissez-faire capitalism (Garg 234). Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture ,

MISSION: Explore academically topics in commercial music in popular culture in the United States of America, Canada, México, South America, and Europe in the early to mid-twentieth century through critical inquiries into popular music, visual culture, cinema, radio, magazines, material culture, commerce, and tourism studies. View brief Information video: HERE . EVENT FORMAT: Original papers welcome on any topic within the scope and focus of this online conference. Paper prese

Interview by Hannah Sophie Schiffner Giacomo Calabria, writing under the pseudonym “Jacopo della Quercia,” is an award-winning educator, essayist, novelist, and taught as a scholar with Humanities New York across a decade. His novels include License to Quill , “a James Bond-esque spy thriller starring William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe during history’s real life Gunpowder Plot,” and The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy , a “historical thriller” with

Marie Buscatto, Sari Karttunen, and Mathilde Provansal, ed. Gender-Based Violence in Arts and Culture: Perspectives on Education and Work . Open Book Publishers, 2025. Book review by Debadrita Saha, Ashoka University In the aftermath of the #MeToo movement in the Hollywood film industry, the origins of which can be traced to the exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual crimes by women survivors in October 2017, artistic and cultural sectors across the world faced a reckonin

Tea Fit For A Queen: Recipes & Drinks For Afternoon Tea Published in association with Historic Royal Palaces Book review by Hannah Sophie Schiffner Tea Fit For A Queen is not only a cookbook. It is a guide through the history of England and its royal houses. The introduction by Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces in Britain, explores tea’s evolution from a novel and expensive drink to its prominent role in everyday British life. She delves further into

An interview with our NEPCA member and Jane Austen scholar Dr. Zsòfia Anna Tóth Interview by Hannah Sophie Schiffner What draws you to Jane Austen’s work? I think Jane Austen managed to write about universal truths concerning life, existence as well as human nature in a way that makes all this accessible with a timeless appeal as well as in a transcultural manner. She is read and understood globally even today. Apparently, she was writing about only a handful of people who

The Northeast Popular Culture Association is proud to honor Aimee Loiselle’s Beyond Norma Rae with the 2023 Peter C. Rollins Book Prize....

Magics, Marvels, Metamorphoses, and Monsters: Horrors of the Medieval Past, Present, and Future (Virtual) Conference held May 14th -...

An Academic Conference and a Call For Papers Brian Brian Peterson, Shasta College MISSION: Explore academically topics in commercial...