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Book Review - A Phenomenology of the Alien: Encounters with the Weird and Inscrutable Other by Aaron B. Daniels
Daniels, Aaron B., ed. A Phenomenology of the Alien: Encounters with the Weird and Inscrutable Other. Routledge, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003519102. Book review by Gabriel Mckee Emerging from the “Alien Salon” convened as part of the Psychology and the Other conference hosted by Boston College in 2021, A Phenomenology of the Alien is an intriguing, if somewhat perplexing, volume. Nearly half of the book’s page count is dedicated to the editor’s introduction, “The Abc
6 days ago4 min read
Book Review - Remaking the Monster: Transmedia Adaptations of Frankenstein’s Creature by Alissa Burger
Burger, Alissa. Remaking the Monster: Transmedia Adaptations of Frankenstein’s Creature. Bloomsbury Academic, 2026. Book review by Holly Hoffmann No literary character has been more enduring than Frankenstein’s Creature but with that endurance comes the difficulty of saying anything new about him. However, Burger’s synthesis of the Creature does an admirable job of being both accessible and analytical, demonstrating how a familiar figure can acquire new meanings as he moves a
7 days ago3 min read
Book Review - Disney Gothic, Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse, edited by Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Disney Gothic, Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse, edited by Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, 2024 Book review by Angelica Kalika Disney Gothic, Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse is an edited collection from scholars around the world giving us a glimpse into the morbid, villainous, and charismatically chaotic Disney characters starting from its Walt inspired shorts to more recent iterations of full-length antihero films. It’s theme park attractions and Disn
Oct 293 min read
Introducing Our New President
Introducing Our New President Rebecca Heimel Rebecca taught for a decade at Cambridge College in Boston, ending her time there as the Elizabeth J. McCormack Chair of Humanities. She is currently the Dean of Teaching and Learning at MassBay Community College. Rebecca holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and is an active scholar in the field. What first brought you to NEPCA? Honestly, an economic treatise. Just kidding, kind of. In Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970), Albert Hirschman d
Oct 92 min read
Introducing Our New Executive Secretary
Introducing Our New Executive Secretary Hannah Sophie Schiffner Hannah spent a significant part of her life in New England. She took classes at the Rhode Island School of Design to build her art portfolio, before pursuing cultural studies at Zeppelin University. Today, Hannah is completing her PhD, where she explores heroic narratives in children’s and teen media. What first brought you to NEPCA? Being the only PhD student at my university working on popular culture, I was lo
Oct 92 min read
Book Review - Playing the Middle Ages: Pitfalls and Potential in Modern Games, edited by Robert Houghton
Playing the Middle Ages: Pitfalls and Potential in Modern Games, edited by Robert Houghton, Bloomsbury, 2023. Book review by Holly Hoffmann The study of medievalism in games is a large and interdisciplinary field, spanning medieval studies, game studies, media studies, history, and other disciplines. Because scholars often approach games from within their own specialties, it can be difficult to follow the full range of conversations about how games represent the Middle Ages.
Oct 53 min read
Book Review - Fandom, Feminism, and the Female Superhero on Film by Lauryn Angel
Angel, Lauryn (2026). Fandom, Feminism, and the Female Superhero on Film. Bloomsbury. Book review by Delenn Ganyo-Roalsvig, University of North Dakota With a new action-packed Marvel or DC film seeming to hit theatres every few months, superheroes continue to be a popular attraction for mass audiences—drawing in broader and broader demographics. Like science-fiction, fantasy, and tabletop role play, no longer are the high-stakes storylines of Batman or Captain America limite
Oct 14 min read
Book Review - A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Age of the Marvelous, edited by Suzanne Magnanini
A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Age of the Marvelous, edited by Suzanne Magnanini. Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Book Review by Amie A. Doughty, State University of New York, Oneonta A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Age of the Marvelous, edited by Suzanne Magnanini, is the third volume in the A Cultural History of Fairy Tales series, published by Bloomsbury Academic as part of The Cultural History series exploring various subjects. In her Series Pre
Sep 205 min read
CfP - Second Annual "Christmas in Popular Culture, 1900-2000" Conference
Second Annual "Christmas in Popular Culture, 1900-2000" Virtual Conference hosted by Shasta College Saturday, November 14, 2026 with special pre-conference keynote address on Thursday, November 12, 2026 Brian Peterson, bpeterson@shastacollege.edu Event Format: Original papers welcome on any topic within the scope and focus of this online conference. Paper presentations will need to include slides and other relevant digital media. Each presenter will have up to 30 minutes plus
Sep 81 min read
Book Review - Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics by Sam Langsdale
Langsdale, Sam. Searching For Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics. University of Texas Press, Austin, 2024. Book review by Shane Gomes Despite a common conception that positive, feminist representations of women have become commonplace (and to the entrenched part of Marvel's readership, unfortunately, too commonplace) Sam Langsdale’s Searching For Feminist Superheroes neatly demonstrates just how lacking the medium is in characters that could,
Aug 97 min read
Book Review - Amateurs: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters by Joanna Walsh
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
Aug 35 min read
Book Review - Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines by Joy Buolamwini
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
Jul 165 min read
Book Review - Shakespeare, Race and Anglophone Popular Culture edited by Mark Thornton Burnett , Vanessa I. Corredera , L. Monique Pittman
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
Jul 73 min read
Book Review - The Spectacle of Online Life, edited by Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, Christopher T. Conner, and Matthew N. Hannah
Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, Christopher T. Conner, and Matthew N. Hannah (eds.). (2025). The Spectacle of Online Life Book review by Shadab Zaveri The Spectacle of Online Life (2025) edited by Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, Christopher T. Conner and Matthew N. Hannah is a collection published under the series titled The Frankfurt School in New Times. It brings together critical theory and digital humanities, studying the real term effects of digital culture on society. The con
Jun 243 min read
Book Review - Fishing and Shipwreck Heritage: Marine Archaeology’s Greatest Threat? by Sean A. Kingsley
Sean A. Kingsley. (2016). Fishing and Shipwreck Heritage: Marine Archaeology’s Greatest Threat? Bloomsbury Publishing. Book review by Heba Fatima Sean A. Kingsley is a marine archaeologist, historian and the Director of Wreck Watch International, a consulting firm that focuses on the protection of maritime heritage against threats across the globe. He has authored several books on underwater heritage, maritime trade and shipwrecks. Fishing and Shipwreck Heritage: Marine Archa
Jun 82 min read
Book Review - Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression by Steven Feld
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.
May 273 min read
Book Review - Pacific Literatures as World Literature, edited by Hsinya Huang and Chia-hua Yvonne Lin
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
May 278 min read
Book Review - The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion-Our Social Skin by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
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
May 243 min read
Book Review - The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates
The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates Book review by Delenn Ganyo-Roalsvig, University of North Dakota With sci-fi cinema like Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) coming to life daily before the amazed eyes of 2026 consumers, technologies that once only occupied speculative fiction are becoming ubiquitous with contemporary Western life. However, for those in marginalized groups these developments bring with them threats to one’s
May 213 min read
Special Area: Taylor Swift & Swiftie Studies
We are introducing a new special area! Taylor Swift & Swiftie Studies Chaired by Ellen Orsi, George Mason University, EOrsi@gmu.edu The Taylor Swift & Swiftie Studies area is dedicated to the emerging interdisciplinary field that examines Taylor Swift’s work as a site of cultural, literary, and theoretical inquiry. Its purpose is twofold: to create space that fosters ongoing academic dialogue and to archive the growing body of scholarship surrounding Swift’s work and its in
May 131 min read
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