A podcast offering an academic perspective on media, from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies
MARISOL cover, Jordan Sjol, José Rivera, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES poster, EERIE, INDIANA promo
We have a special treat for listeners in this episode as DePauw University’s Jordan Sjol sits down with acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and TV writer José Rivera for a conversation about his journey from playwriting to Hollywood, writing across different media, adapting literary classics, and balancing artistic integrity with commercial demands.
If you missed it – and let’s be honest, most everyone did – you can catch up with the episode we recorded live on the eve of the SCMS 2025 conference in Chicago. Hear about the labor of the Graduate Student Organization from the GSO rep, the power of finding joy in play from Matt Payne, and the importance of building local community from AJ Christian. (With usual apologies that the sound isn’t great.)
The Onion’s Jim Anchower; the cover of Swapnil Rai’s Networked Bollywood; Swapnil Rai; Global Media Podchat logo; Critical Media Project logo
Chris chats with Swapnil Rai about her book on how Bollywood stars transformed Hindi cinema into a global phenomenon, as well as how she uses podcasting activities in her classroom. And if you’ve got ideas for how students can study media by making media, you’re invited to submit a proposal for a symposium at Notre Dame on that very topic.
David’s Slovenia House credential; Stephany Fuentes, Imagen Television; David with Mexican journalists David and Gilles; a sign put up by Droit au logement, an association that defends the rights of the homeless; Latvian journalist Lotars Zorins’ credential
Aca-Media producer David Lipson was in Paris for the 2024 Olympics/Paralympics, so we sent him out into the field. He captured some sounds of the city and the people flocking to arenas and also turned modern journalism’s most essential tool – a smartphone – toward journalists themselves, uncovering the challenges, and a few joys, that unite media professionals across the globe today.
Book cover, Stephanie Brown, newspaper excerpt, Maggie Hennefeld, Kamala Harris
Stephanie Brown delves into the dangerous world of women laughing in this conversation with Maggie Hennefeld about her new book Death By Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema. Covering everything from 19th-century obituaries blaming giggle fits (rather than girdle fits) for women’s deaths to the modern-day political power of a vice presidential cackle, we’re certain this episode will entertain you … just short of killing you.
Liz Ellcessor, Mia Uribe Kozlovsky, a reader at the beach (Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash), Kristina Brüning, Marina Fontolan
We’ve reached that late post-spring time of year, as Michael judiciously puts it, and if you’re lucky and industrious enough to have finished writing something over summer and you’d like to get published, we’ve got just the roundtable for you! One side of the table features experienced editors and the other side has young scholars with questions, so the end result is an engaging and enlightening discussion about how academic publishing works these days. Thank you to guests Liz Ellcessor, co-editor of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies; Mia Uribe Kozlovsky at University of Texas Press; Kristina Brüning, Graduate Student Representative on the SCMS board; and SCMS Precarious Labor Organization co-chair Marina Fontolan!
The Talking Television series is back, courtesy of organizers
Brandy Monk-Payton, Hunter Hargraves, and Lynne Joyrich!
O.J. Simpson died on April 10, 2024. Along—and intertwined—with the impact that he had on formations of "law and order," celebrity and scandal, race and gender, class and nation, Simpson had an enormous impact on U.S. television. This episode of "Talking Television" considers that impact, as TV scholars Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, Brandy Monk-Payton, and Samantha Sheppard talk about the televisual construct of "O.J. Simpson" and about media and culture in the wake of "OJ TV."
Wiseman Podcast logo, Frederick Wiseman, Shawn Glinis, Arlin Golden, David Lipson
In this episode of Aca-Media, David Lipson talks with Shawn Glinis and Arlin Golden, the creators of Wiseman Podcast, which is devoted entirely to discussing the films of — you guessed it — Frederick Wiseman. Shawn and Arlin explain how the podcast is produced and why they feel Wiseman should be mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick, Coppola, and Scorsese. Also, Chris and Michael banter about an exciting result of a past episode.
Bust out your fancy headphones for this episode, folks. In one our best episodes ever from an audiophilic perspective, Jonathan Nichols-Pethick talks with Jacob Smith about his recent experimental audiobooks, ESC: Sonic Adventure in the Anthropocene and Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves, both of which are available as open access files on the University of Michigan Press website. Then Chris and Michael chat about the gratification of SCMS volunteering, wish you a happy eclipse, and tout the glories of NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
Recorded live on the scene! (so please forgive any less-than-ideal audio quality) Convening at the 2024 SCMS conference in Boston and gathering “after dark” on the conference eve (i.e. after the opening reception and its free bar, which might have made us all a little giddy), Chris and Michael chat with longtime Conference Manager Leslie LeMond and new president Vicky Johnson about what goes into choosing a conference city and what the future may hold, as well as some of the unique challenges the organizing team faced this year (yes, they talked about the awards situation). We then welcome Aniko (Madison friends, update your pronunciation) Bodroghkozy, who tells us about the new Television and Radio History Scholarly Interest Group. And we end with a few suggestions from Michael for sites to see, things to eat, and horrific animal scenes you may encounter while in Boston.